In October 2013, we overhauled the Visitor Information pages to make them easier to use on a mobile phone. With as many as 30% of all web visits including the visit information pages, this was a priority. This post looks at how you can quickly make your web pages easier to use on a mobile phone for your visitors, just by simplifying site structure and content.
Visit information was a priority for mobile access
The V&A attracts around three million visits a year. Obviously, it is important to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find the information they need to get to the Museum. Of course, mobile phones are an essential means of finding information for many people. From national statistics and our own research we knew that:
- 50% of the UK population access the web on a mobile phone
- More than half of UK adults own a touch screen “smart” phone
- Two thirds of visitors to the V&A own a smartphone and carry it with them in daily life and on their visit to the Museum
- Mobile phone access to the Visitor Information pages approaches 30% in a month (and additionally 15+% via tablet)
- 17% of social referral traffic is on a mobile phone
Using a mobile phone affects how people look for information
There are a number of fairly obvious ways in which using a mobile phone affects visitor behaviour:
- Phones have small screens, which makes basic things like reading small text or following links hard to do. Steve Hoober’s great article on how people use their phones is essential reading on this subject.
- Phones have limited battery life. This means users have to make rationing decisions about how long they will use their phone for and prioritise what it is that they look at (leisure content versus making calls or texting etc.). When surveyed, our visitors had specifically told us battery life affects whether they will use their phone.
- Connection speed and reliability affects usability of phone access services
- People make decisions based on the potential cost of data charges. As many as 50% of visitors to the V&A can be overseas visitors. When surveyed, our visitors told us that concern over data charges deters them from using their phone.
A quick win – simplifying structure and content makes mobile use easier
Given what we knew about the use of mobile phones as above, we looked at the visit information pages. The “Visit Us” pages were split into six separate pages (one each for “getting here”, “facilities”, “opening hours” and so on). We looked at the pages using mobile phones and in doing so, it quickly became obvious this structure created immediate problems when accessed this way.
The solution was simple. Combining the six visitor information pages into one single page would make the experience immediately better for people on their mobiles. Here’s why…
Problem 1 – It was hard work getting to the content
Having to navigate to six pages was much harder than it needed to be because it meant having to repeatedly look for navigation and then use a link. Of course navigating between pages by following links is hard work on a phone as it requires precise touching of links with a finger.
Improvement to user experience 1 – SCROLL FRIENDLY
Having all the visitor information on one page meant a simple scroll with a single finger gesture – much faster and easier!
Problem 2 – data-connection fluctuations could interfere with access to multiple pages
As well as making it unnecessarily difficult to get to the content, selecting each of the six pages meant making a new connection to the site. When you travel, signal strength changes. In London, people travel to the Museum by underground trains. This could mean that if travelling with the phone, there might be a connection for one page, but the not for the next page. This introduced risk of a disjointed experience.
Improvement to user experience 2 – CONNECTIVITY LOSS NOT A PROBLEM ONCE LOADED
All the essential content was now on one page, so once loaded it was not necessary to have a further data connection to read it all. In practice, if a page was loaded at a Tube station, it could then be used inside a tunnel e whether there was still a connection or not.
Problem 3 – download time was higher than necessary
Loading data takes time. Waiting is irritating. There was duplication of content between pages required for them to make sense as standalone pages, not needed if combined. There were also many more images on six pages than were necessary on a single page.
Improvement to user experience 3 – 83% FASTER DOWNLOAD
After combining, the file size of the final single page was the same (around 1.4Mb) as each of the previous six pages. This meant the single page was 1/6 of what it was to download six separate pages. That is 83% faster!
Content changes based on user-behaviour evidence
As well as streamlining and deduplicating the text and drastically reducing the number of unnecessary images, the nature and balance of the page content was considered. To do this we studied the evidence about what our web visitors do on the website, when they are planning a physical visit to the Museum.
Studying what people do on site when they are planning a visit
We studied data from a survey of online users undertaken within a Culture24-led research project in November 2012. This allowed us to isolate the behaviour of people who specifically said they were planning a visit from other users. Using our navigational tracking data from our web statistics, we could see exactly what types of content people were navigating to on the site when planning a visit.
Adding promotional features to practical information
The data was very clear. People planning a visit were overwhelmingly doing one of two things. They were either seeing what is here, or finding out how to do something about it. Previously the page content had been more about practical information and had not had promotional features based on an assumption tha at this point people were after just the facts. In light of the data, we also added image-led promotional features highlighting exhibitions, shop products and events.
User-evidence considered when making these changes
This is a great post! Its amazing how quickly internet mobile phone use has grown over the last few years. I remember the days of WAP and thinking this will never work. However we have come a long way since then. Now we have google working on promoting AMP HTML which is solely targeted at mobile phones and such. Everything we do these days is on mobile.
We are so looking for this website as to get the all.
I can’t found article about this anywhere. Thank you a lot