Japan's Mobile Social Networks Need Some Usability Tweaks

To find out how easy it was to register for Japan's mobile social networking services (SNSes), Forrester applied an abridged version of its Web Site Review methodology to the site experiences at Japan's leading mobile social networking sites: Mixi Mobile and Mobage-town. Neither site quite achieved a passing grade — Mobage-town was let down by cute but distracting presentation, and Mixi Mobile offered unclear categories and insufficient help in the event of errors. Despite these flaws, Mobile site owners can take some valuable lessons from the pared down registration processes offered by both sites: Mixi Mobile excelled in the layout of its mobile forms, while Mobage-town made it easy for the user to fix errors and kept her aware of how she was progressing.