Why Web Designers Should Focus On Mobile-First Design
After reading the title you may be thinking, what is Mobile-first? Where websites and other forms of marketing have been designed to be viewed on desktop as a priority, Mobile-first marketing takes the approach that the mobile view should, in fact, take priority.
Why We Need Mobile-First Websites
Web designers have always taken the approach of Desktop-First strategies, even after smartphones gained popularity and as a society, we started to do more of our surfing with the devices in our pockets rather than at our desks. So why change now? With the constantly developing technology of smartphones, devices the size of a watch holds the same processing power as even some desktop computers.
Due to this, the computer has been replaced by the phone and in 2018, 58% of site visits were from mobile devices. As there is an obvious trend that the majority of browsing is done from a mobile device, this means that making the change to Mobile-First websites is becoming more important than ever.
How To Take A Mobile-First Approach
You may be wondering, ‘Yes this is important but how can it be done?’. There are many ways to make your site more suited for mobile devices.
Responsiveness Is Key
The main part of any website, of course, is the foundation. If you have not made sure that your site is responsive, then the site will quickly become a jumble of content once brought into a tablet or other forms of mobile devices. Due to this, the first priority would be to make sure that everything is correctly positioned, sized and the padding is correct for all devices the website could be opened on.
Keep It Simple
The one downside to browsing on a mobile device is the size of the screen. Due to this, you will tend to see mobile versions of websites looking a lot simpler and cleaner than their desktop counterpart. This is also done due to the fact that touch screens are a lot less accurate than a mouse meaning that small buttons and other fiddley content are usually not included or changed to work better within a smaller environment.
Does It Work
If a website does not function, then it loses its purpose. A functioning website is vital on a desktop but due to mobile screens having much smaller dimensions it is even more important for mobile devices.
With this screen dimension change, things such as the navigation bar can become too small to view, unusable and generally not functioning. Due to this, it is important to take into account that certain things need additional changes for mobile devices such as reducing padding or positioning as the device resolution is reduced, decreasing font sizes as well as even sometimes removing things that are non-functioning on mobile devices altogether.
Conclusion
I think we can all agree that web design has always been an ever-changing industry that never fails to find a new way to improve or adapt. Because of this Mobile-First Marketing’s importance within web design is only gaining momentum as we see mobile device technologies advance.
