I have been browsing websites with an iPad for nearly two years now, and while the web has definitely improved for tablet mobile viewing, there are still a lot of sites that do it wrong. Some of the most common problems I see include:

• Forcing my tablet browser to view the pages in a mobile format better suited to a smartphone. My tablet is big! It can handle your full-size or nearly full-size design!
• Related to the above, forcing me to view a mobile version of the site that doesn't have the content I want. In one case, when I clicked on a link to an article on my iPad, the site took me to their mobile homepage instead. And since that homepage only had the top 20 articles, I couldn't find the one I wanted to read.

Content is important on websites, and keeping the content streamlined is also important—and even more important for mobile viewers. But you need to strike a balance. Just because many of your mobile readers go immediately to the contact page to find out your phone number doesn't mean that all of them do. While you're trimming the content from your mobile sites, keep in mind that people who can't find the content you've trimmed may not come back to your site on their desktop browser.

Learn more about mobile content design in this article Don't Limit the Content on Your Mobile Sites, But Limit the Content

More Suggestions for Mobile Design

• Write Web Pages for the iPhone
• Mobile Web Pages - Give Your Readers Options
• Should we forget columns for mobile devices?

Are You Annoying Readers with Your Mobile Site? originally appeared on About.com Web Design / HTML on Monday, December 12th, 2011 at 04:40:57.

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