buy a book on their mobile phones from the millions on offer at Amazon is asking a lot of their time and patience. Last November, Amazon brought out a new iPhone app (US only) which focuses on letting users take pictures of items which they want to buy later. It’s not a complete buying experience - but Amazon wants to get more by doing less.

Intelligent guessing

When people are on the move they often need an answer to a specific question, straight away. One way to improve a user’s mobile web experience is to guess the question-and- answer the person is looking for. For example, if the user is checking train times with a GPS enabled mobile device, they could be presented with the departures board for their nearest station. Even if this is not what they had in mind, nothing has been lost (if the user is given all the same options they would have had on a standard homepage).

Anticipation

Each time a user makes a journey through a mobile site you can learn about their behaviour and anticipate future actions. For example, if the user requested train times from Bristol to London on Friday afternoon and return to the site on Saturday morning, it could be antici- pated that they are still in London and are looking to return to Bristol. Offering this sort of anticipated information decreases the amount of time a user needs to spend completing a journey.

Navigation

Mobile web sites must to be simple to navigate. Most mobile phones have joysticks or multi- direction buttons, but users can find them hard to manipulate. Create usable navigation by laying out menus as single, vertical columns of options. Try not to use grid style lists, as most people will struggle to navigate around them. Have no more than six options per list and create easy access to favourites and recently visited items to make the site easier to use.

Text messaging

For many users, the mobile phone can be a ‘black hole’ into which data disappears. A large number of users struggle to access and manage their photos, let alone navigate through a

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