5 Reasons Why You Should Adopt Mobile-First Design Approach

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Everywhere we go, we see folks with their eyes and hands glued to their smartphones. Some are scrolling through their social media, some are watching YouTube videos as they’re waiting for the bus, while others are busy looking at the latest items from their favorite online store.

Indeed, the world has gone mobile. In fact, there are currently 7.1 billion people mobile users globally, with the number expected to rise to 7.26 billion by 2022.

Because of this, companies are now prioritizing the mobile-first design approach. Those who fail to adopt this strategy usually find themselves struggling to drive traffic and generate qualified leads, affecting their sales drastically.

Mobile usage is only going to grow over time, which means that your business will also grow if you use a mobile-first strategy. Not only it helps you stay relevant, but you get to provide a state-of-the-art experience to your audience.

If you’ve yet to incorporate a mobile-first design approach into your digital marketing efforts, now’s the time to start. Before we can convince you further, however, let’s first discuss what it is.

What’s the Deal with Mobile-First Design?

As the name exactly implies, mobile-first design is all about designing your website for mobile. It places priority on mobile devices over desktops, ensuring a seamless user journey on screens of all types and sizes.

The concept was developed by Eric Schmidt, Google’s then-CEO, in 2010 to solve a certain pain point: Online users wanted to perform the same tasks on their phones as they could on their computers or laptops.

So, basically, mobile-first design is a web development strategy which puts the mobile user’s needs first.

Web designers first build the website for a mobile platform, after which they enhance it for desktop use. As they scale to bigger screens, they can add more elements to occupy space.

Why Should You Adopt Mobile-First Design Approach?

So, why’s there an urgent need to adopt this approach? Why are many companies suddenly hiring web developers to get the job done? These five reasons should answer you:

Aside from the fact that you aim to give your web visitors the most pleasant user experience possible so they can ultimately convert, here are five reasons why you need to focus your time and effort adopting a mobile-first approach:

Top-Notch User Experience (UX)

Let’s face it, people are bound to leave a website if they don’t like what they’re seeing or how they’re navigating. They prefer sites that provide smooth navigation, an intuitive user interface (UI), and pages that run at lightning speed.

After all, who doesn’t love a pleasant online experience?

If you noticed, the qualities we just mentioned can be found both on desktop and mobile - which gives the latter the upper hand.

For starters, you can’t swipe or tap your laptop or computer screen, unless of course, it comes with a touch screen. Using voice activated search isn’t possible either.

Better UX translates to attracting more visitors who’ll be coming back every now and then. You’ll earn their loyalty to the extent that they turn into actual customers. Before you know it, you’ll see your conversion rates going up like crazy.

Higher Rankings

On July 2019, Google made a major announcement: Mobile-first indexing would now be the default for ranking websites.

Google would have their smartphone bots crawl sites and analyze the mobile-friendly content to index the web pages, snippets, structured data, and other elements. All websites will be crawled, including those that have been existing for years.

Whereas new sites or mobile apps are crawled solely on their mobile design, existing sites are crawled on the consistency of their content, metadata, and structured data.

With Google making mobile-first indexing by default, you should follow it not just for relevancy, but also because you want to rank high on search engine result pages.

Securing the top spot means having to take the mobile-first route. Paired with a solid SEO strategy, getting your website to rank well won’t be a difficult task.

Remember, the better you rank, the more quality traffic and leads you generate, and of course, the higher your ROI gets.

Appeal to the Majority

A mobile-first website is compatible with pretty much all types of devices. In other words, smartphone, tablet, and desktop users who visit your site will see the same content and features.

Since a massive amount of online traffic now comes from mobile users, it makes perfect sense that you start tailoring your mobile-first plan as soon as you can.

Fewer Bugs

Unlike in a desktop-first approach, coding for mobile is way simpler.

When you begin with a complex desktop website and strip it down to a mobile site, you’ll need to reorganize its complicated code so it can work on mobile. This can only mean one thing: Expect bugs spreading across your site.

On the other hand, if you start with the mobile code, life will be much easier. You don’t have to worry about those annoying bugs attacking your website’s UX anymore. The code ensures all your design elements are well-suited for mobile devices.

As you finally add more content and complexities, your mobile code remains as it is. Sounds fantastic, huh?

More Manageable Content

Having little space for content, mobile-first design leaves web designers with no choice but to prioritize important information.

The available space should only be dedicated to content that will guide your visitors along the buyer’s journey. This is great for a couple of reasons.

You get to eliminate unnecessary elements that distract users and slows down your website. It will make your web designs appear cleaner and more concise. And, because text is usually arranged in short paragraphs of two to three sentences, you make reading much easier and less time-consuming for your audience.

Mobile-First Is the Future

Ready to hop on the mobile-first design bandwagon? After learning its benefits, we have a feeling you are! Who knows, it might just be the missing piece to your digital marketing strategy!