Tablets offer a different style of browsing, and web owners must improve its experiences, Forrester says.
Forrester Research Inc. predicts that tablet sales will grow from 10.3 million devices in 2010 to 44 million in 2015. And as the tablet market grows, product strategists must nurture both the app ecosystem and the browser environment —as both will be key channels for delivering content experiences on tablets.
In a recent survey of tablet owners by Forrester, tablet users were found to access websites on their tablets more often than they do apps. Consumers driven to find information on companies they want to do business with find websites still as their first preferred point of contact. Although an app can be considered as another touch point for the customers, a website can nevertheless be accessed anywhere, and on any device.
“While people spend a lot of time browsing sites on tablets, the simple truth is that sites weren’t built specifically for these devices. As a result, unintended usability breakdowns hamper most website experiences on tablets today” writes Forrester Research senior analyst Vidya Drego in her recent report. So as the number of consumers browsing sites on a tablet skyrockets, website owners must look to create the right experience strategy, and improve the web browsing experience from tablets.
Five Fixes for Merchants to Enhance their Browsing Experience
For the benefit of merchants Forrester has identified five quick fixes firms can make today to improve how users experience their websites on tablets.
I. Consider Alternatives to Plug-ins like Flash, Java etc: Sites that rely heavily on flash multimedia do not render well on the iPad. iPhone visitors to a site with Flash see only a blank square. Further, while few sites today are completely constructed in Flash, large numbers of sites use Flash for displaying multimedia elements, menus, and some imagery. As a result, merchants should use alternatives to Flash, such as HTML5 for audio and video streaming and JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets 3 for animations.
The Golf Warehouse, operated by Redcats USA was one ecommerce retailer which acted early on this issue. Since the two main features on its home page were based on Flash slide presentations, it promptly created static images to render on devices that don’t support Flash to maintain a better experience on the iPad.
II. Simplifying complex Mouse tail movements : Touchscreen devices do not support mouse actions like hover or double-click. Thus to offer an optimal tablet browsing experience, merchants should also simplify complex mouse movements. Designers should stick to scrolling, panning, and selecting or clicking on elements to enable touchscreen users to get the most from the experience.
III. Increase spacing between interactive elements: Most interactive elements like drop-downs, links, radio buttons, and check boxes were designed for mouse input, not finger taps. As a result, many of these elements are spaced tightly and result in mis-selections or misfiring when controlled via a touchscreen. More space in and around these elements should reduce errors.
IV. Increasing the size of text and other elements of a page: Screen size and resolutionvary in Tablets, and while most allow users to zoom in to better view content and functionality, zooming in repeatedly to see and interact with a site can get tiresome quickly. Drego writes. “Increasing the size of key elements including headlines, category names, navigation elements and body copy can help users quickly scan content without zooming in. This has the added benefit of making a site easier to use from a PC as well.”
V. Avoid fixed page width and positioning: Because most tablet users toggle the orientation of the device among vertical and horizontal views, merchants should steer clear of using a fixed page width since it can effect in content that renders too narrowly or widely for the device.
Forrester Research says following these five tips can help customer experience professionals leave tablet users satisfied with their site. It adds sites seeing increasing traffic from tablet devices should look out for patterns in their analytics data and quickly improve to create the right experiences for its tablet customers.