The typical mobile website experience is horrible. Everyone knows that, right? Sure, it’s easy to find some terrible mobile website experiences, but are mobile websites systematically worse that their desktop counterparts? Now that 80% of all adults who go online own a smartphone this is an important question to answer.
Mobile websites often look like stripped-down versions of their desktop alternatives, so it’s easy to see why there’s an assumption of more difficult experiences. In some cases, these limited sites are a result of a stop-gap effort to have a mobile solution. In other cases, a deliberately minimalist “mobile-first” effort produces these mobile designs. And of course the very limited real estate means it’s harder to read and see content, but it also means there’s no room for banner ads, hero images, promotional images, carousels, and other design elements typically included on sites with more real estate.
