Small or crowded buttons cause mis-taps and frustration on phones. Accessibility guidance sets minimum sizes for touch targets, and spacing matters as much as the element itself.
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Guidelines
WCAG 2.2 sets a minimum target size, and mobile platforms publish their own recommendations. As a rule, give interactive elements generous size and clear space around them, especially primary actions.
Places that go wrong
Inline text links packed together, icon-only buttons, footer menus and close buttons on popups are common offenders.
Common mistakes
Testing only with a mouse
Try your key flows on a real phone with thumbs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Mobile usability is part of the page experience guidance, and poor targets harm real users, so fixing them is worthwhile.
Keep reading
- Thumb Zone: The thumb zone is the area of a phone screen a user can reach comfortably with their thumb while holding the device in one hand.
- Mobile UX: Mobile UX is how easy and pleasant a website is to use on a phone, covering layout, tap targets, readability, forms, speed and navigation.
- Web Accessibility: Web accessibility means building sites that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate and use, including with assistive technology.
- WCAG: WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, is the W3C standard for accessible web content, with testable criteria at levels A, AA and AAA.
- A/B Testing: A/B testing compares two versions of a page or element by randomly splitting visitors between them and measuring which performs better on a chosen goal.
- Call to Action: A call to action is the prompt, usually a button or link, that tells a visitor what to do next, such as start a trial, book a demo or read more.
- Color Contrast: Color contrast is the difference in luminance between text or controls and their background, measured as a ratio that WCAG sets minimums for.
- Conversion Rate Optimization: Conversion rate optimization is the practice of raising the share of visitors who take a chosen action, using research, page changes and controlled tests.
