Low amount of content
The whole point of creating a mobile website is to give mobile visitors an easy way to access the website’s content. The only difference between the full website and the mobile website should be the simplified and easier to navigate layout of the mobile website. Basically you have to show the same type of content as if the user was on your full size webpage. In order to do that, you have to cut any unnecessary components, without compromising functionality and accessibility.
Bad Layout
Do not forget the limitations of the mobile devices, mainly smaller screens and lack of mouse and keyboard input. That makes hover unusable. Also, if not optimized, a web browser will squeeze the content of a full size webpage into the mobile device’s screen, leading to totally unpredictable results. If you use tons of images and text, the result may very well be funny but unusable.
Ignoring device memory limitations
Smartphones and tablets nowadays more powerful than their predecessors but they are still far from the capabilities of personal computers. Huge heavy websites could load up and work just fine on a desktop computer or a laptop, but they will get very lazy on mobile devices with limited memory. Cut loose the large images and other content that could load time.
Use heavy code
Huge JavaScript and CSS files take forever to download. Optimize these files by removing as much white space as possible.
Using Flash
Adobe Flash is the best way to disappear from mobile Internet. Flash it not compatible with browsers in mobile operating systems, including Android and iOS. They will simply not display Flash content at all.
Displaying videos
Video on a mobile phone will take a huge amount of time to load. Either consider compressing the video for mobile devices or use YouTube / Vimeo.
How long would a mobile user wait for the page to load before they left?
- 3% would wait less than one second
- 16% would wait 1-5 seconds
- 30% would wait 6-10 seconds
- 16% would wait 11-15 seconds
- 15% they would wait 16-20 seconds
- 20% said they would wait 20+ seconds
