Shoddy Web experiences driving users from the mobile Internet

Remember the dark days of dial-up Internet? Those long, painful seconds waiting for Web pages to load and for requests to process? Those random disconnections? Those exorbitant hourly fees? Not being able to view a page because it didn’t support your browser of choice?

According to the results of a recent survey by Antenna Software, similarly poor experiences are deterring users from surfing the mobile Web via their Internet-enabled smartphones. Device makers, Web designers, and mobile service providers alike have their work cut out for them to make the mobile Internet experience more affordable and appealing.

In a survey of nearly 4,500 individuals in the United States and the United Kingdom, Antenna found that mobile Internet usage is up among Americans and Brits alike. One in three British (34 percent) and American (33 percent) consumers access the Internet using their smartphone at least once a week, up from 27 and 28 percent respectively in 2010.

Despite the increased adoption of smartphones and activity on the mobile Web, however, nearly half of the American respondents (44 percent) said they don’t use their Internet-enabled phones to go online at all. That same percentage of respondents said they would more likely take advantage of mobile Internet access if the experience were similar to that of using the Internet on a PC.

Shedding some light on the specific issues users are having, 27 percent of all respondents said they were discouraged from using the mobile Internet by websites that did not display properly on their screens. Further, 28 percent of U.S. respondents and 32 percent of U.K. respondents cited difficulty in navigating websites on mobile devices.

Herein lies on the of significant challenges faced by website designers of the world: Not only do they need to support new platforms (Android, iOS, Windows Phone 7, and the like) with their respective browser; they also have different form factors to contend with, from low-end phones with tiny screens up to the emerging line of tablets with larger viewing panes. Additionally, different types of devices have different constraints in terms what sort of content they can capably support (e.g. streaming video) and how quickly they can render it.

Cost, too, remains a deterrent to greater mobile Internet usage: 33 percent of Americans and 39 percent of British survey respondents said accessing the Internet from their mobile phones was too expensive, despite the growing availability of flat-rate data packages.

This story, “Shoddy Web experiences driving users from the mobile Internet,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.