You probably plan your webinar at a desk with a big screen. A good share of your guests, though, will watch on a phone: on the bus, during a lunch break or on the sofa in the evening. A mobile friendly webinar takes more than bigger text on your slides. Sound, data use, chat, registration and the buy button all have to work on a small screen too. This article follows a guest on a phone through the whole journey, from signing up to the last tap.
Slide design for phones, with font sizes, contrast and charts, is covered in detail in Webinar slide design that works on a phone screen. Here we look at everything around the slides.
How people watch on a phone
People watch differently on a phone than at a desk. A few typical situations help explain what that means:
- On the move. On buses and trains the signal comes and goes, it’s noisy, and sometimes people have to get off before the webinar ends.
- In between other things. Someone watching during a break has little time and is easily interrupted.
- On impulse. Many tap the link in the reminder email and are in the webinar seconds later, without ever moving to a computer.
Three principles follow from this. The webinar has to work with one hand. It has to make sense on a weak connection. And anyone who drops out briefly has to find their way back in easily.
Portrait and landscape
Most people hold their phone upright. A 16:9 webinar picture then takes up only a narrow strip at the top, leaving room underneath for the chat, notes and a button. Turn the phone sideways and the picture gets big, but depending on the player the chat disappears or floats as a semi-transparent layer over your slides.
Both ways of holding the phone have a cost, and you don’t know which one a guest will choose. So plan for both:
- Don’t show key information in one place only. A link that only appears in the chat is often invisible in landscape. A price that only appears on a slide is tiny in portrait. Say the important things out loud as well.
- Keep the buy button reachable either way. Check whether it appears at all in landscape, and whether it’s visible in portrait without scrolling.
- Don’t keep asking people to rotate. A note like “Turn your phone for the big picture” helps at the start, but nobody should need to rotate to follow the webinar.
What needs to be readable besides the slides
Around the webinar picture there are often things nobody thinks about while designing: the title, a countdown, notes about the chat, a privacy line and buttons. On a phone they quickly become too small or slip off screen.
- Make buttons big enough. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2) set a minimum size of 24 × 24 pixels for controls. As a rule of thumb, around 44 pixels with some space to the next element is much more comfortable to tap.
- Don’t hide links on slides. Nobody can tap a slide. Keep web addresses short and easy to say, and add them as a real link below the picture or in the chat.
- Keep important notices visible. Things guests need to know, such as the fact that they are watching a recording or that automated replies appear in the chat, must not disappear on the small screen.
Sound for small speakers and earbuds
People are less forgiving about sound than about picture. Phones bring some extra conditions.
Small speakers. Low frequencies get lost, and a thin voice gets thinner. A clear voice recorded close to the microphone, on the other hand, carries well through a phone speaker. Pull background music right down while you speak, or drop it altogether, because on a small speaker it masks the syllables first.
Earbuds. Lots of people listen with a single earbud. Effects that sit on one side only simply vanish. Audio that sounds good in mono is the safe choice.
Even volume. If a video clip is much louder than your voice, people on a train will grab for the volume button in a hurry. Match the levels of all parts before you publish.
Silent start. Many mobile browsers only play sound after the guest has tapped the screen once. Make sure a clearly visible “Turn on sound” button appears when the picture is running but nothing can be heard.
Watching without sound. Someone in a waiting room or an open-plan office often won’t turn the sound on at all. For them, captions are the way into your webinar. Webinar captions and subtitles that people can read explains how to create them.
Mobile data and weak connections
A webinar is a video, and video uses data. How much depends on the quality your player streams at. A worked example with an assumed figure: if the player streams at 1.5 megabits per second, 45 minutes adds up to around 4,000 megabits, or roughly 500 megabytes. On some plans that’s a noticeable chunk.
A few simple steps follow from this:
- Keep the registration page light. Compress large images and don’t autoplay a video. Signing up shouldn’t already eat into anyone’s data.
- Give an honest hint in the invitation. A line like “The webinar runs most smoothly on Wi-Fi” is enough. It shouldn’t put off anyone who wants to watch on the go.
- Design for changing quality. On a weak connection many players lower the picture quality. Slides with large text and calm areas stay readable; fine detail doesn’t.
Dropouts and getting back in
On a phone the connection drops in a tunnel, a call comes in or the screen switches off. What matters is what happens next. Before your first session, check whether a guest can get back in with the same link, whether they land at the right point and whether they can do so without registering again.
The chat on a phone
As soon as a guest taps into the chat box, the keyboard covers half the screen and the slide is often gone. That affects how you plan for interaction.
- Allow short answers. Questions that can be answered with one word, a number or a single character work far better on a phone than open questions that need a whole sentence.
- Leave time. People who are typing listen less closely. Pause briefly after a question before moving on with new content.
- Don’t lay the chat over the slide. If new messages cover the picture, watching becomes hard work. Guests should be able to collapse the chat on a phone.
For more on making the chat a real conversation, see How to run a webinar chat that helps your guests.
Registration and emails on a phone
The road into your webinar starts long before the session, and it often starts on a phone.
The registration form
- Few fields. A first name and an email address are usually enough. Every extra field is more effort on a phone than on a computer.
- The right keyboard. A field marked up as an email field opens a keyboard with an @ key on a phone. With the autocomplete attribute set, the browser can suggest the address.
- Show errors next to the field. A message at the very top of the page, out of view after tapping the button, is missed by almost everyone on a phone.
- Tappable tick boxes. A box for optional consent must be easy to hit with a finger, including the text next to it.
How to build a webinar landing page that converts covers the page as a whole.
Confirmation, calendar and reminders
When someone opens the confirmation email on a phone and taps the link, they often end up in the email app’s built-in browser. Later the same guest may watch on a laptop. Their personal access link therefore has to work on any device, not just the one they registered with.
Adding the session to a calendar should take one tap on a phone. Check this on both of the common phone operating systems, because they handle calendar files differently. Webinar calendar invites with an ICS file has the details. In the last reminder just before the start, put the link right at the top, clearly visible and with plain wording. One tap should be enough to get into the webinar.
Buy button and order page
Many webinars end with an offer. On a phone, this is where it’s decided whether the journey can actually be completed.
- The button to the offer is big enough and isn’t hidden by the chat or the keyboard.
- The order page opens so that guests can find their way back to the webinar, for example in a new tab.
- The order page itself is built for phones: readable prices, few fields, common payment methods.
- What the webinar says about price and contents matches the order page exactly.
A full phone run-through before launch
Plan a complete run-through as a guest, using a real phone on mobile data. It complements the slide test and takes about as long as the webinar itself.
- Registration completed on the phone, with a second email address
- Confirmation link opened from within the email app
- Calendar entry added with one tap
- Sound starts, or a sound button is visible straight away
- Webinar watched in portrait and in landscape
- A chat message written while the keyboard is open
- Connection cut and the link opened again
- Screen locked briefly and unlocked
- Offer tapped and order page checked
- Repeated once on an older phone with a small screen
For a complete list of everything to check before you publish, see The webinar checklist to run before launch.
Frequently asked questions
How many people watch webinars on a phone?
There’s no figure that holds for everyone; it depends heavily on audience, time of day and topic. Either way, plan for your webinar to work on a phone.
Do guests need an app to join on a phone?
Ideally not. Any app that has to be installed first is a hurdle, especially for guests who tap a link on impulse. A webinar that runs straight in the browser is much easier on a phone.
Should I record a separate portrait version of my webinar?
For most webinars that isn’t necessary. Widescreen slides work on every device if they’re well designed. Short portrait clips for social media are a separate job.
Plan for the smallest screen
A webinar that works on a phone almost always works on a computer too. The reverse isn’t true. So plan from the smallest screen, make the full guest run-through a habit and look at your figures by device type. That way you also reach the people watching between two tram stops.
