Mobile websites for older customers: what to change

Key takeaways

A website for older users on mobile does not need to be a special, simplified version. It needs the fundamentals done properly: text that can be read without strain, buttons that can be hit with a less steady hand, labels that say what they mean and a phone number always in view. Those changes help every visitor.

• Over-65s in the UK spend about 3 hours 20 minutes a day online (Ofcom, 2025).
• Larger text, stronger contrast and bigger targets are the priority changes.
• Words beat icons: label every button and menu.
• Keep a phone number visible for those who prefer to talk.

Do older customers use phones to go online?

Yes, in large and growing numbers. Ofcom's Online Nation 2025 report found that UK adults aged 65 and over spend around 3 hours 20 minutes online each day. That is less than younger adults and far from negligible. For many, a smartphone or tablet is the main or only device.

Assumptions about age and technology are often a decade out of date. Today's 70-year-old may have used a smartphone for ten years. What changes with age is not willingness. It is eyesight, dexterity and patience for interfaces that hide things.

• Why mobile-friendly web design is essential for UK businesses
• Reaching over-50s on social media in the UK

What gets harder with age on a small screen?

Four things, in general terms. Small or low-contrast text becomes harder to read. Small touch targets become harder to hit accurately. Gestures such as swiping and pinching are less reliable. And unfamiliar icons or hidden menus cause more hesitation, because there is less willingness to tap something just to see what it does.

• Vision: small type, thin fonts and grey-on-white text.
• Dexterity: small buttons, close-together links, drag and swipe controls.
• Confidence: unlabelled icons, hidden menus, pop-ups with tiny close buttons.
• Memory and attention: long forms, timeouts and steps that lose progress.

• Mobile accessibility: the WCAG checks for small screens

What should you change first?

Change text, targets and labels. These three cover most of the difficulty and are inexpensive. Raise body text to 17 or 18 pixels with a darker colour. Make every button at least 48 pixels high with clear space around it. Put words on every control.

• Body text 17px to 18px, dark on a light background, with generous line spacing.
• Buttons and links at least 48px high, well separated.
• The word 'Menu' beside the menu icon, and text labels on all icons.
• Pinch zoom enabled, and layouts that hold together with larger system text.
• No auto-rotating carousels or content that moves on its own.
• Errors explained in plain words beside the field.

• Font size for mobile websites: what is readable?
• Tap target size: how big should buttons be on mobile?
• Hamburger menu vs bottom navigation on mobile websites

How should contact and forms work?

Offer the phone prominently. Many older customers prefer to speak to a person, particularly for anything involving money, health or their home. A tap-to-call number at the top of every page, with the hours it is answered, is the most valued feature you can add.

Keep forms short and forgiving. Use clear labels above each field, avoid time limits, do not clear the form on an error, and confirm in plain language what will happen next. Offer to take details over the phone as an alternative to any online step.

• Click-to-call: turn mobile visitors into phone calls
• Mobile form design: forms people finish on a phone

What builds trust with older visitors?

Clarity and evidence that the business is real. Older customers are frequently warned about online scams and are rightly cautious. A physical address, a landline or clearly local number, named people with photographs, memberships of recognised bodies and reviews with a verifiable source all reduce hesitation.

Avoid pressure. Countdown timers, 'only 2 left' messages and pop-ups that are hard to close read as warning signs to a cautious visitor, and misleading urgency is an unfair practice under UK consumer law. Plain statements of price and process do more.

• Website trust signals that make visitors enquire
• Dark patterns: conversion tricks that break UK law

What should you not do?

Do not build a separate 'senior' version or adopt a patronising tone. Older customers are not a single group, and most do not want to be singled out. A site that is clear, legible and respectful works for a 75-year-old and a 25-year-old alike.

Do not remove online options in favour of the phone, either. Many older customers book and buy online happily. The aim is choice: a good online route and a visible human one. The trade-off is that larger text and targets make pages longer, which is acceptable if the most important information stays near the top.

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see in businesses serving older customers, such as mobility, hearing, home care and estate planning: the site uses fashionable small grey type, an unlabelled menu icon and a booking widget with tiny date cells. The customers it is built for are the ones least able to use it on a phone, so they phone, if they can find the number, or they ask a relative.

Enlarging and darkening the text, labelling the menu, putting the phone number in a bar at the top and simplifying the booking step are modest changes. Global Bridge Labs (GBL) tests such sites with larger system text switched on, which reveals within a minute whether the layout copes.

• See client work
• Website Design & Development for UK businesses
• Make your website work properly on mobile

Next step

Increase the text size in your phone's accessibility settings to the largest option and open your site. If it breaks or becomes hard to use, your older customers are seeing that every day.