The Sun’s web platforms were recently voted the worst online news platforms provided by a newspaper. By examining The Sun's mobile website, Kyle Mane, interaction designer for Newcastle digital agency Orange Bus, highlights some of the reasons why.

1) Poor labelling (such as “Sun City”) - Generally on mobile devices, the connection speed is a lot slower than browsing the Internet on your home computer. The implication of this, is that readers don’t want to waste their time looking at content that is not relevant to their interests. More meaningful labelling would be helpful for their users, allowing them to access the desired content more effectively.

2) Full screen adverts - While browsing the mobile site, users will be presented with full screen adverts that block their view of the content. The user has no control and must wait for adverts to disappear. This may be required for monetary reasons, but can degrade the users’ overall experience (see below).

Missing latest news links - Only the 3 latest news stories are displayed on the sites homepage. The main header area outlines the latest news stories/headlines but does not link to the story, leaving the reader to navigate the mobile site in search of the matching article. 

Low/missing categorisation of news articles -  All news comes under the category “News”, meaning if the user was looking for a specific story/category, they would still have to browse all news stories (or search) until they find the content they are looking for. Even the main Sun website categorises it’s stories, but these do not appear to be carried over to the mobile site. Sport is broken down a lot more clearly: Football, Cricket, Boxing,  Rugby and so on.

Broken article links - When browsing the site, a few articles appeared to be broken and navigated to a “Error 200” page. Again not a major issue, but can influence the user’s view/opinion of the site (see below.)

Missing functionality - Functionality on thesun.co.uk website is missing from the mobile site. A lot the other mobile news sites are much more functional than sun mobile site. For example they include social media share buttons and the ability to comment on articles. As the largest new paper in the country, you'd expect its mobile site to be fully featured.