Introduction
Taking into account the advances of the recent years in the field of information technologies, portable devices are currently the most popular means through which users access the web and content. All in all, mobile first design strategy is now essential for business and organizational communication goals to respond to customer needs and expectations. This article will expound on what mobile first design entails, why it is crucial in the current world and some of the most important guidelines to follow when designing mobile first.
What is Mobile-First Design?
Mobile first design is the approach adopted by web designers where they design a website or an application exclusively for the smaller form factor devices and then scale up for the larger form factor devices. The idea is to offer the best experience on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, while only afterwards applying the minimum requirements of the adjusted experience to other devices like desktops or laptops.
The mobile first approach means that the smaller screen of a mobile device is the design that is initially adapted for, and other platforms are built around this. In other words, mobile first approach is aimed at identifying the highest priority of the information and functions that should be available to mobile users and organizing website navigation and layouts to fit the limited screen size. Images and text blocks may have to be scaled down or the number of these may have to be reduced so that the scroll length is not too long or the content area of the mobile screen is not too filled up.
Mobile Usage and its increase
This is why mobile-first strategy has become so important: there are billions of people around the world accessing the internet through mobile devices. According to recent figures, mobile traffic is now accounting for more than 60 percent of website traffic. Also, consumer time engagement in digital media is increasingly shifting to mobile applications rather than mobile websites or PC. There is one common approach that defines the future of online advertising: the focus on the mobile experience.
Furthermore, Google itself has been advocating for mobile-first environment, giving a boost to those websites that are built with a mobile-first experience in mind, with responsive design and optimized for speed. Because they know that with the proper technical mobile infrastructure and the overall user experience, they know they will be seen and get the traffic from search that drives them.
Benefits of Mobile-First Design
Adopting a mobile-first approach brings several key benefits:Adopting a mobile-first approach brings several key benefits:
- Optimized User Experience: When you design for the mobile first, you ensure that all the traffic patterns will be enhanced once the site or the app is up and running. Mobile-first approach guarantees that no functionality or content is squeezed, complicated or placed in a difficult to access area of the mobile layout.
- Faster Load Speeds: Reducing for mobile is all about removing what takes up much space and is unnecessary for experiencing the main content of sites and services. With mobile-first indexing, websites that are specifically designed for mobile devices are likely to load very fast on a number of devices.
- Higher Conversions: It means that when a consumer is using his/her mobile device, the customer can conveniently educate himself/herself on a particular product, check on the price to be charged and even make a purchase without a fuss. This results in increased prospects of sales conversion.
- Improved Search Rankings: In this case, as stated earlier, prioritizing mobile also helps in increasing other critical ranking factors observed by Google such as page speed and responsiveness.
- Lower Bounce Rates: Effective mobile sites do not allow their visitors to get easily frustrated with the site’s layout or structure as compared to the unreliable mobile sites. They are active for a longer time on the pages.
Mobile-First Design: Existing Practices
Here are some top tips to implement an effective mobile-first experience:Here are some top tips to implement an effective mobile-first experience:
- Leverage on the responsive web design technique to make layouts fluid and thus easily adaptable to different screens.
- Create high-speed page designs which are optimized in terms of the number of HTTP requests and whether the compression is enabled.
- Minimise the number of steps to a conversion in mobile website funnels and eliminate extraneous steps.
- Specifically, the use the touch target sizes that make the actions such as tap and click easily recognizable on touchscreens.
- Limit the textual content of mobile pages and avoid lengthy content by placing less text in the columns and combine different sections.
- After testing on iOS devices now try to test your application on Android devices to make sure that it is compatible with both platforms.
The Future is Mobile
Finally, it is crucial to assert that the mobile-first design approach must remain the focus of any new product, site redesign, or digital media initiative from now on. With people spending their time increasingly using their mobile devices for shopping, reading, socializing and even as a source of entertainment that includes browsing the internet, having a way to reach those audiences who are on the move has become a must, especially for brands and content producers. The integration of the mobile approach becoming the primary one in terms of creating new sites and applications is the new norm in today’s world.
Conclusion
Mobile has brought an impact change to the internet and digital marketing in the last ten years. The mobile-first approach ensures the customer is placed first through how they now access the internet, making it an excellent strategy. Many consumers now own smartphones and are always connected to the internet through these devices, and thus by adopting a mobile-first strategy during the planning phase of new brand experiences, then this makes it convenient to provide mobile experiences that are well Benchmarked to the consumer’s digital lives. This leads to customers being happier, bounce rates being lower, and businesses experiencing faster growth and better sales conversion rates throughout the whole customer funnel. In short, if a company/developer has not adopted mobile first design, then they are simply not designing for the future.
