If you’re a business owner who plans to create a website for your business, you’ve probably heard of mobile-first websites. But what is it? Does it matter in establishing your online presence? If your customers are online, which they probably are, you need to focus on building mobile-first websites.

Mobile-first websites affect your online marketing strategy. It can help you rank on different search engines, like Google and Bing. Thus, it results in broader audience reach, increases your sales, adds credibility to your brand, and helps customers easily find the information they need.

Since Google shifted to mobile-first indexing, several businesses have been complying with the mobile-first design approach to increase their chances of getting a high ranking on search engines. But what does it take to create a mobile-first website? Here’s a quick guide about mobile-first design.

What Is Mobile-First Design?

Mobile-first focuses on providing a fundamentally effective user experience on mobile devices. To be mobile-first, you must concentrate your digital transformation efforts on developing a user experience that works equally well on mobile devices. The goal is to make sure that the website looks excellent on mobile and that it is easy to navigate and doesn’t have any overload or sluggish processing issues.

Since Google switched to mobile-first indexing, using a mobile-first design approach has increased your chances of attaining a high search engine ranking. Being mobile-first means that your website should work great on smartphones. 

Nowadays, a mobile device is one of the initial contact points between your company and a potential customer. So slow loading web pages can occur if a website is not correctly optimized for mobile.

Smartphones, alone, have approximately half of the web traffic worldwide. In the third quarter of 2020, mobile devices generated 50.81 percent of global website traffic. It means that more than half of your customers are viewing your website from a mobile device. In short, having a desktop-only designed website is not enough to stand out from every other business.

Combine your mobile-first website with these strategies in optimizing web images.

How Can Mobile-First Marketing Benefit The Business?

Gone are the days when the only thing we had to worry about as business owners were designing a website that looked great only. With over half of all internet traffic now coming from a mobile device, it’s more crucial than ever to ensure your website performs flawlessly on smartphones. Thus, mobile-first marketing gives one or two steps ahead of the competition.

Mobile-first websites will boost your reach.

The majority of internet users use mobile devices to access the internet at least some of the time. However, 40% of users will switch to a competitor after a horrible mobile experience. Thus, taking a mobile-first approach will allow you to reach and satisfy more individuals, as well as potentially introduce your company to new audiences.

Mobile-first websites can increase brand equity.

A mobile-first strategy sets you apart from the competition and builds brand equity. If you design your website with mobile in mind, you may make the purchasing or booking procedure as simple as possible. It makes transactions a lot easier. As a result, you can convert more leads which leads to higher income.

It makes content easier to process.

Compressing and simplifying your website content into bite-sized, easier-to-consume portions is a terrific strategy to go mobile-first. It can result in a far better user experience, resulting in people reading and consuming your material.

You can reach people for longer periods.

People are increasingly using their mobile devices to access the internet. It implies that, rather than focusing on specific times during the day when someone is seated at their computer, cell phones give us a larger window through which to contact our ideal clients.

Why Is Mobile-First Important For Websites?

Mobile-first design delivers a good User Experience (UX) on the right screen. Here are more reasons why you need to focus on a mobile-first strategy.

Improved User Experience

A mobile-first strategy requires a greater emphasis and attention on the user’s needs and the most important content. Therefore, you need to avoid flashy widgets, vanity features, and fillers. Instead, you need to focus on usability testing to deliver the suitable material and the right amount of content. Moreover, it would help if you learned how to provide more content as needed – and something easier to use on mobile devices’ smaller screens.

Better Performance

A web page with fewer elements and optimized content will load faster in terms of web speed. Page load times are critical for usability and SEO (search engine optimization). Furthermore, because most internet users now access Google Search through a mobile device, Google crawls and indexes content with a mobile-first strategy. It is why having a responsive website is becoming increasingly vital.

Decreased Bounce Rate on Mobile Friendly Websites

In general, mobile bounce rates will be 20 to 30 percent higher than desktop bounce rates. It is because people who use mobile devices are more likely to look things up fast while on the road.

However, everyone has had the experience of accessing a website on their phone and instantly abandoning it due to the website’s poor design. Fortunately, you can keep the bounce rate for mobile devices low by using a mobile-first design strategy. As a result, it will save a larger percentage of users and deliver a better overall user experience.

Top Tips For A Mobile-First Website Approach

Here are some more tips to be consistent with your mobile-first website approach.

• Make it mobile-friendly: Make your website simple to access for on-the-go customers. Buttons should be easy to click, the text should be easy to read, and the copy and image balance should be outstanding.
• Check your page-load speed: Run a speed test on your site before going live. You’ll probably discover that your mobile users have even less patience or time to speed, so every second counts. Make it simple for users to provide feedback about your company and their online experience.
• Perfect touchscreen targets: Compared to a mouse click, pinpointing anything with a finger is more complicated. On mobile, 7-10mm touchscreen targets are ideal.
• Keep it simple: Because a mobile-first design must look excellent on a small screen, you should go for a straightforward but effective logo.

Choosing a mobile-first website approach will be beneficial to your company. With over half of all internet traffic now coming from a mobile device, it’s more crucial than ever to ensure your website performs flawlessly on smartphones.
If you’re looking to design your website yourself, take your time learning how to make a mobile-first website. If you don’t have time for it, perhaps, a website design expert in San Jose can help. Get in touch to find out more about my website design packages.

SBZD Marketing and Web design

3165 Olin Ave Suite #11, San Jose, CA 95117, United States

408-882-1307