Focusing on a mobile-first website isn’t an option these days: it’s a necessity.
If you’re a business owner with an online presence, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that over half of all online traffic is now coming from smartphones. This isn’t just a boon for increased traffic and easier accessibility to business listing for consumers. It’s also another demand on business’ ability to adapt. Traditional websites don’t display correctly on mobile devices. And if your site isn’t easy to read and navigate, you’re going to lose leads to competitors that do have mobile-friendly websites.
What is Mobile-First?
Mobile-first isn’t a gimmicky or difficult term to decipher: it simply means that your website is designed with mobile users first in mind. This doesn’t mean that it won’t display properly on desktop; instead, it will be optimized first and foremost for mobile, and your site will automatically adjust for desktops (and tablets, for that matter).
The goal of mobile-first web design is to create the best possible user experience for mobile users. As use of smartphones continues to increase, it becomes more and more important to ensure that these users are able to easily navigate your site, so that you can increase the chances of them converting into paying customers.
Responsive vs. Mobile-First
You’ve probably heard of responsive website design, and have hopefully updated your site to a responsive one within the last 5 years or so. But how is responsive design different from mobile-first?
Responsive web design is when you adapt a desktop website to display correctly on a smartphone. The process involves scaling down and simplifying a website. The key difference is that it puts desktop users first.
As we’ve already discussed, mobile-first does the opposite. It creates the mobile experience first and then expands it from there to work on a desktop screen.
What are the advantages of mobile-first?
Since 2019, Google has prioritized mobile-first when it indexes websites. This means that, as Google’s bots crawl your website, it will use the mobile version of it to index and rank your site. What happens if you don’t have a mobile version, or the one you have is poorly designed? Google knocks down your quality score, which in turn lowers your rankings on organic search result pages.
Another reason to consider a mobile-first website is the fact that 79% of smartphone users have made at least one online purchase using their mobile device in the last 6 months. In addition, mobile-first websites have much faster loading speeds. With 40% of users reporting that they only give a page 2 seconds to load before leaving it, having a fast site is extremely important for user experience.
Overall, you can expect a mobile-first site to help you:
- Boost your reach
- Increase brand equity
- Improve your user experience
- Make content easier to process
- Reach people for longer periods of time
See the Difference Mobile-First Can Make with our Help
If your business is looking to increase sales by better appealing to users online, building a mobile-first website is a great way to achieve this goal. It doesn’t have to be a huge expense either; we offer a range of website package options to suit every budget, from simple 3-page sites to more elaborate 10+ page sites. And you can rest assured that, no matter how small or how big your project is, you will receive the same level of care and attention to detail to ensure your website is everything you want it to be.
At Gulf Coast Web, we have over 25 years of experience in managing all types of digital design and marketing campaigns – even for companies outside of our immediate area. Our staff consists of highly-trained digital design advertising professionals who are both passionate about their jobs and excel at what they do. Contact us today to book a consultation with our team. We look forward to outlining exactly how we can help you grow your business with our digital media agency services.