# Business development
The Importance of Mobile First Design
Red Rocket teamAug 21, 20246 min read
In This Article
What is mobile-first design Why is mobile-first important Features of mobile-first design FAQMany of us well remember the first button phones and how hard it was to use them to access any website on the Internet. Pages took a long time to load, and the small screens did not allow you to fully view the information you needed. About 15 years have passed and today the situation with mobile devices has changed significantly. Statistics show that in 2016, people started using more mobile devices than PCs to access the Internet. This was the starting point for business owners to think about responsive design for smartphones and tablets.
The importance of mobile design lies in improved user experience, increased traffic and sales numbers. With the increasing engagement of smartphone users, the concept of mobile first design has emerged in the web development environment. What does it mean, how does it work, and why is mobile first design so important? You can find the answers to all these questions in this article. Moreover, we will share with you mobile optimization tips that will help you learn how to create mobile friendly website.
What Is Mobile First Design?
As mentioned above, in the last few years, mobile devices have had a quantitative advantage over desktop computers. Today, users are more likely to search for an answer to a question in a browser from their smartphone and less likely from a tablet. The majority of e-commerce sales also come from users who use mobile devices. What's coming next? Based on current trends, many experts predict that smartphone usage will only increase.
Surprisingly, the requirement for mobile-first design was first announced in 2010, at a time when desktop devices were still at the height of popularity. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt already realized then that the future was in mobile devices and having a mobile friendly design meant being competitive in the market. So, what is mobile first design? This is a website design strategy whereby a website is designed for mobile devices primarily, then for tablets and lastly for computers. This has the principle that web designers work on the smallest screens first and gradually move to larger screens. In order to better understand why the mobile first design strategy was invented, we suggest taking a closer look at the design concepts.
1. Responsive website design
Responsive design gets its name because of its ability to automatically adapt to different screen sizes. For example, imagine you are looking at hotel booking services on different devices, including a smartphone and a computer. The same design would make it inconvenient to browse, flip through pages on one of the devices. Responsive design helps to automatically adjust to the size of the device from which the user is visiting the website.
2. Graceful degradation and progressive advancement
As you can already understand from the name, this methodology includes two concepts that differ significantly from each other. We propose to take a closer look at the differences between the concepts of graceful degradation and progressive advancement.
- Graceful degradation. This approach means that web designers start with large devices and then gradually work their way down, working on tablets and smartphones. Mobile versions may then be limited, as it may be difficult for developers to incorporate features that are present on a computer.
- Progressive advancement. Progressive advancement involves a backwards concept, where designers start their work with something small and then move on to larger screens. This allows the desired features to be evenly implemented and the design to be as comfortable on small smartphones as it is on large computers.
Most experienced designers say that the best option is to use the concept of progressive advancement. When you start with a small screen, you can clearly see what features you can successfully implement and replicating this on a larger screen is easy.
Why Is Mobile First Important?
As you have already realized, today mobile design flexibility is an important thing that can affect how successful your business will be. The number of users who use smartphones is not the only reason for the importance of mobile design. In fact, there are a number of mobile design benefits that can help your website grow.
Impact on SEO
Do you remember when we said that former Google CEO talked about the importance of mobile-first design in 2010? Just six years later, the American company announced the introduction of a new algorithm for search robots Mobile First Index. This system is able to independently assess how convenient a certain website is for the user of a mobile device.
Why mobile first design is important for SEO? It's very simple - if your website is mobile-friendly in the best way possible, you get an edge over other competitors. Google has publicly announced that mobile-friendliness is going to be one of the significant indicators of ranking. Because more than 50% of all Google searches are made through mobile devices, it is crucial to consider mobile optimization for increasing visibility.
Improving user experience
If you are focused on getting as many potential customers as possible, you must be mobile-friendly. Otherwise, using the website will be uncomfortable for the user and he will quickly leave the page and turn to your competitors. When you make a mobile first design, you need to pay attention to improving the user experience. What do we mean?
- Choose fonts that are easy to read. Avoid using very thin fonts that look confusing.
- Use the space properly. If there is empty space on the site, you don't need to add extra elements so the site doesn't look empty. It is better to add useful features or information for customers.
Mobile optimized sites are arranged in a way that they are easily viewable on small screens with large utilizing large clickable areas and fine readable text.
Fast website loading speed
Websites with numerous graphics, videos and other huge files or poorly coded take more time to display in mobile devices. Moreover, imagine that a potential customer also has problems with mobile internet. In such a case, your website page might take too long to load, which will make the user leave the page for sure.
If you have created your website pages for mobile devices first, you most likely won't have problems with image sizes. They will be optimized for smartphones and tablets, which will have a great effect on the loading speed of the web resource. It is considered that a page load that takes no more than 3 seconds is an excellent indicator.
Increasing the number of sales
Better conversion rate is another reason for the importance of mobile design. Page load speed, improved user experience, easy navigation and SEO impact in an integrated approach contribute to more sales. Mobile first design sites allow users to understand products, payout processes, and other transactions in a better way. This means higher conversion rates and more revenues from mobile traffic.
Features of Mobile First Design
And so, it's time to take a closer look at the concept of mobile-first design and its features. We will tell you what you should pay attention to in order to increase website traffic mobile with the help of user-first design.
1. Accent on Content
The small screen sizes of smartphones dictate their own requirements: if you want to get the user to take a targeted action, you first need to show the elements that will lead to conversion. To determine what should be displayed on the page of the site in the first place, the study of user flow helps. For different types of business, you can identify certain standards of user behavior:
- Why do they come to the site?
- What are users looking for?
- What will make their search easier?
When you have found the necessary minimum of elements that will help the client to make a targeted action, move on to adding additional content. For a retail store, this can be delivery information, reviews, contacts, etc.
The interface of news, entertainment and training resources should include their mandatory triggers. For example, for a blog, such elements can be registration buttons, subscription buttons, article rating, a form for sending comments, recommended materials on the topic, and much more.
2. Visual Content Hierarchy
You can improve user interaction with your website if you know not only what to show, but also how to present it. Visual hierarchy of content involves highlighting its most important components and placing them in special areas of attention of smartphone users. In this case, designers can use psychological techniques to focus the attention of the site visitor on the necessary elements. In practice, in most cases it looks as follows.
| Importance of content | Placement |
|---|---|
| Most important content on the site | Central part of the screen |
| Elements of secondary importance | Both above and below the main content of the website |
| Lowest priority content | Topmost part of the page |
There are also more detailed mobile device ergonomics schemes based on the «rule of thumb». This approach is based on research on how users hold a smartphone in their hand and the way they control them. It turned out that 75% of people touch the display with only one thumb.
3. Ease of Navigation
Good navigation on the mobile version of a website is a demanding thing. It must both provide an ideal user journey through the resource, and at the same time fit into compact interface elements, so as not to distract from the main content.
Many users have already gotten used to the standard design of most sites and intuitively look for a button with three parallel horizontal lines in the top line. Clicking on the icon reveals a list of available sections of the site.
However, some UX designers are of the opinion that users generally rarely interact with what they can't see. Studies have shown: hidden navigation increases the difficulty of finding content by 21% compared to the visible navigation state.
4. Mobile Friendly Design
Taking care of the user's comfort while surfing through the site is another mandatory attribute of the mobile first design concept. By providing a well-designed UX, you can count on repeat customer visits in the future. We have already cited a lot of statistics in the article, and here is another important fact: 48% of respondents consider the ease of use of a mobile site to be its most important quality.
When designing a mobile-friendly interface, you need to take into account not only the limited display space, but also other peculiarities of smartphone usage.
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Conclusion
Many business owners have already adapted to the new realities brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns, changing customer needs and habitual behavior have caused a significant portion of retailers to move their services online. While many have a computer or laptop both at home and in the workplace, a significant portion of inquiries still come from mobile phones.
Smartphone is a personal assistant that is always at hand. Mobile internet makes it easy to find the information you need or make a purchase in conjunction with other activities - while riding in transportation, watching a movie or other activity. However, the reality is that today there are many people who use old smartphones with weak operating systems. This prevents them from downloading new apps or utilizing the features of the latest technologies. This is why creating a responsive mobile website is a step that every business owner today should take. Do not miss the opportunity to increase conversion rates and customer loyalty - carefully work out the mobile version of the site. Whether to stop at the classic «desktop to smartphone» option or to choose mobile first design - each company decides for itself depending on its goals and capabilities.
Frequently asked questions
What are the drawbacks of the mobile first design concept?
One of the main reasons why the approach has not yet gained large-scale popularity is the impressive amount of work involved. Designers and developers have to prepare not just one version of each unique page layout, but several: for mobile, tablet and desktop devices with different screen parameters.
What kind of business needs mobile design?
It doesn't really matter at all what niche your business operates in, what your capital is or how many employees you have in the company. First and foremost, any business is focused on success and profit, so it's important to attract as many customers as possible. The best way to do this is to create a responsive mobile design.
What's the future of mobile websites?
Predicting the future realms of websites is difficult task even for experienced professionals. However, today's trend tells us that the number of smartphone users will only grow in the coming years. Almost every online purchase will be made using a mobile device.
