A digital web presence is mandatory for any business today, whether your product and services are digital or not. But a website alone is no longer enough to build a digital brand and increase your reach.
When you combine the rise of “mobile only” Internet users (that is, users without laptops or desktops, connecting solely via their mobiles) with the often broken functionality available on many mobile websites, you get frustration on both sides — and costly frustration, at that: Per the U.S. Department of Commerce, companies without accessible websites stand to lose around $6.9 billion each year.
If you aren’t yet thinking about all of this from a liability standpoint, by the way, start; accessibility-related litigation is up over 180% in recent years. Fortunately, by focusing on key areas when creating or updating your web presence, you can avert disaster and turn your missed customer connections into long-term loyal fans.
How and why do most mobile websites fail their user base? When websites aren’t properly optimized for the mobile web, more often than not they end up leaving out all of those “mobile only” users. Currently, that’s around 2 billion people or 51% of all users – but by 2025, that proportion could skyrocket to 72%. And according to the WebAIM Million, an annual report that assesses the home pages of the world’s top 1,000,000 websites from an accessibility standpoint, the situation gets even worse when you factor in the experiences of users with disabilities: Approximately 96.3% of the million websites reviewed in 2023 had discernable Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) failures.
Suffice it to say you can’t, and shouldn’t, sweep this problem under the rug if you want your company to survive for long. But what exactly can you do to ensure your mobile web presence comes across clearly to each and every user, just as you originally intended? Let’s explore some strategies that help close the gap.
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Accessibility is king
Improving your website’s accessibility helps bring disconnected users back to the fold — or the checkout flow, as the case may be — thus increasing your potential future customer base. You can use automated tools to check for compatibility, at least up to a certain extent, but there’s truly no substitute for end-user feedback and testing when it comes to clarifying issues in design or functionality.
At global nonprofit Understood, an organization on a mission to change the world by supporting equity of treatment for neurodivergent individuals throughout their lives, refocusing on users and their feedback was a natural next step. Keeping this mindset throughout all phases of the design process has been their North Star of accessibility, and perfectly complements the org’s purpose. As Understood devs Catherine Houle and Ilknur Eren