User Choice

In chapter 2 we discuss how converting your desktop-based site to a miniature one for mobile users is not the right approach. This not only refers to the different capabilities of the users’ devices, but also to the users’ usually different needs when sitting at a desk compared to using a mobile device.

Throughout this guide, we have emphasized anticipating your users’ interests while they’re mobile and making it as easy as possible for them to reach the needed content. While this is an important rule of thumb, taking advanced steps in creating a mobile experience requires slightly reconsidering the rule of thumb.

Crucially, when we say “usually different,” there are nonetheless some cases where some users may have particular reasons for accessing content usually associated with access from the desktop.

For example, lengthy research reports are, for most people, hard to read on a mobile device. When planning your site, you would not make access to such reports a priority. However, some users, because they need the information and do not have access to a more appropriate device may wish to access the report anyway. Some users in various demographics may not have access to a desktop experience at all.

For these and other reasons, devices coming into the market today anticipate that users, for whatever reason, may wish to access ‘the desktop experience’ while mobile.

It remains true that typical mobile devices cannot present a full desktop experience, as the size of the screen and more importantly, the lack of a full keyboard and pointing device remain obstacles to text input and typical desktop navigation.

That said, it is important that in spite of anticipating users’ common needs in your mobile experience, you do not prevent them from accessing aspects of your content designed primarily for the desktop experience.

While you should anticipate users’ needs and provide them with what you think is an appropriate experience by default, you should allow them to over-ride your assumptions.

Include a link to the mobile experience on the desktop experience and include a link to the desktop experience on the mobile experience.