We’ve sure talked a lot about simplicity in web design here on the WSpider blog in the past—and without a big surprise, we’ll talk about it again (probably won’t be the last time, either). Why?
Well the bottom line is this: Simplicity has such an essential place in good design, whether it’s product design or website design. It’s all about taking the required functionality, boiling it down to the most essential components necessary to achieve this, and finally polishing it up into a smooth and appealing finished product.
Simple just works:
· One – It’s organized.
· Two – It’s de-cluttered.
· Three – It gets right to the point.
This is exactly what people want. What they don’t want is to have to wade through the muck or get past oodles of annoying “bells and whistles” before they can get to what it is they’re looking for.
And here’s the point of all of this, really—simplicity is the answer for better mobile sites.
Mobile web browsers face significant limits:
· Screen space is limited.
· Bandwidth is also limited.
· Processing power limited.
Full-scale, fully-featured website designs just don’t carry over to mobile use in a seamless, friendly way. They might work, but this doesn’t mean that they work well, are appealing, or actually serve their purpose of interacting with visitors. After all, mobile visitors are on the go and busy enough already—they’re not going to stick around on a site if it is a hassle for them to use with their mobile devices.
Again, the key here is keeping it simple.
Simple designs work effortlessly for the web without much extra attention necessary to carry them over to mobile use as well. Think about it…without all of the clutter in the way, visitors can see the content clearly. Isn’t this what also works best for mobile use? The answer is definitely yes.
Simple designs that are mobile friendly will often be based on a few solid “simplicity” principles, including basic, easy to use navigation, a lack of high-bandwidth features, no pop-ups or difficult to use forms, no Flash (it doesn’t work with iPhones or iPads), and most importantly, by following all of the rules of a good text based content platform.
Text works wonderfully with mobile devices. And the best part about a text heavy design is that good writing for the web already takes into account its very own unique form of design and formatting. This works just as well on your office PC as it does your mobile device. Plus, it looks great in the process.
It’s really simple…simplicity just works for mobile-friendly design.
