Mobile-First Design for Beginners

October 20, 2022

 

The way we use the web has changed drastically since the invention of smartphones. The days of simple web pages are long gone. Today, over 90% of people worldwide access the internet via a mobile device.

What does that mean for your business? Primarily, it means that when it comes to UX design, the mobile use case must be top-of-mind. If you aren’t prioritizing mobile UX design when building your products, websites, and landing pages, you risk losing a massive chunk of online traffic.

For small businesses and those new to building the web, designing for mobile can seem like a daunting task. However, the mobile design doesn’t have to be a headache. Most web design frameworks nowadays support mobile and mobile-first UX design. Most web developers and programmers are aware of the pitfalls surrounding mobile-first development.

Let’s look at why mobile-first design is important and talk about some simple ways that you can approach mobile-first design when building your products.

 

What Is Mobile-First Design?

Mobile-first design is a design philosophy that prioritizes optimizing content for mobile devices. This approach is different from desktop-first design, in which desktop content is reorganized to fit a mobile screen.

Mobile-first design entails not only positioning content in a different layout. You must consider the unique challenges of designing for mobile devices. For example, mobile device performance is very different from desktop performance. Developers can do things like optimizing images to load more quickly on mobile devices by using a smaller file size.

Mobile-first design also means accounting for how people use mobile devices compared to desktop computers. Mobile devices are more frequently used for online shopping, browsing, streaming, and absorbing content at-a-glance, while desktop computers are more likely to be used for work.

Mobile design also opens up a new world of options for capturing and utilizing user content and device hardware. Mobile devices have different interfaces available for taking pictures and videos, and it’s easy to access user content like files and photos and make them available for sharing.

 

Why Is Mobile-First Design Important?

As previously stated, mobile internet use far surpasses desktop use in most of the world. Since 2015, mobile internet traffic has been on the rise and now accounts for over 55% of all internet traffic.

Beyond simply the ubiquity of mobile internet, use is the frequency with which people check their mobile devices and the time people spend online via their phones. Worldwide, people spend about 5 hours a day browsing the internet on their mobile devices.

It is not only end-users who benefit from good mobile design: enterprise businesses must also keep mobile UX in mind when considering the ROI of their UX designs. Too often, inertia means that enterprise businesses miss out on revenue because their legacy codebases are too difficult to update to modern design practices.

It’s easy to see why a mobile-first approach to web design is crucial when building modern web interfaces.

 

How Should Mobile-First Design Be Approached?

To successfully implement a mobile-first approach, you must understand what users expect from a mobile web experience. Collecting and analyzing data and user feedback is a critical step in a mobile-first design approach.

Accessibility is another consideration to keep in mind when taking a mobile-first approach to design. Mobile devices present a unique set of challenges when it comes to making content easily accessible for people with disabilities and elderly people.

Mobile-first design should be an iterative process, always starting with the Minimum Viable Product that will allow users to do what they need to do and build on that product to improve it and add more features.

Finally, all stakeholders must be involved and on board with the mobile-first approach. Designers and engineers must all be on the same page about product requirements and the constraints of designing for mobile.

 

Best Practices for Mobile-First Design

Below are some of the best practices for successful mobile-first design. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is a good starting point for someone just learning to get comfortable designing for mobile.

1. Optimize Content for Available Space

The main difference between desktop devices and mobile devices is screen real estate. Obviously, mobile screens are much smaller than desktop screens and are laid out in portrait orientation rather than landscape.

This difference in screen size doesn’t just mean that you must lay out your content differently on the page. It also means that you need to consider which content is most important, most engaging, and most likely to keep your users on the page. Prioritize that content and put it “above the fold.”

You should also think about the ways you can group content to maximize space. Hamburger menus, for example, are a great way to efficiently group things like navigation links. Photo carousels can replace galleries, and pop-out video players can replace embedded video players.

 

2. Design Your Navigation

You may not have given much thought to the way you design your site’s navigation. On a desktop, you can handle navigation with a few links in the header and footer of the homepage. Desktop computers allow users to easily navigate back and forth between tabs, making navigation less of a concern.

On mobile, however, navigation must be optimized to deliver a clean user experience. In mobile apps, stacked modals are a major navigation component. It is important to consider the order in which a user moves through these stacked modals.

Mobile devices do not allow users to switch back and forth between tabs and windows as quickly and easily as desktop devices do, so it is necessary to consider this when sending your user to a new page or tab.

Some things that can make navigation more intuitive on mobile are

  • hamburger menus
  • modals
  • gesture-based navigation like swiping
  • zooming and full-screen navigation
  • sticky headers and footers

 

3. Optimize Performance

Mobile devices have different performance constraints than desktop devices. Desktop devices have higher voltage levels that provide more power and can deliver faster load speeds, render images at a higher quality, and stream content more efficiently.

Desktop devices are usually connected to faster internet connections than mobile devices. Home routers and ethernet cables provide much better download and upload times than cellular networks.

For these reasons, it is critical to optimize your page load times, image rendering times, and data streaming. Page load times are a huge factor in user bounce rates, which are higher across the board for mobile devices. Most users will leave a page if it does not load within a few seconds.

Some things you can do to optimize mobile performance include

  • Caching things to avoid making unnecessary requests
  • Scaling images
  • Avoiding the use of too many different fonts
  • Avoiding long-running, CPU-intensive tasks
  • Not blocking the critical rendering path
  • Inlining CSS for a faster initial load
  • Keeping your Javascript bundle small

 

4. Test Everything

 

Testing is a critical part of continuous development, and mobile testing should be part of your overall testing solution. You should implement both manual and automated testing of your mobile designs, as well as your desktop designs.

There are many testing frameworks available for testing mobile web designs. Every new code change should include automated tests to ensure that the designs are performing as expected. Additionally, you should include regression tests to ensure that changes do not break existing functionality.

Automated testing is no replacement for a solid QA plan and manual testing. Humans often catch things that machines cannot so make sure you are running through a defined suite of manual tests with every release.

Some great options for doing mobile testing are

  • Appium
  • Selenium
  • Espresso
  • Cypress
  • BrowserStack
  • App Live

 

5. Make Designs Accessible

Accessibility is a necessary consideration when designing for the web, but especially when designing for mobile. Users with specific requirements for navigating the web will often have more trouble using mobile devices than desktops.

Small font sizes, cluttered interfaces, tiny tap targets, certain color schemes, and automated audio cues are not good for accessibility when it comes to mobile UX design. Additionally, making an interface accessible will affect how developers code your designs. There are certain tricks and techniques that web developers use to code layouts that won’t work on mobile when considering accessibility requirements.

The Mozilla Developer Network has excellent guidelines for accessibility and keeps a running document for mobile-specific accessibility requirements. Keep these requirements in mind as you build your mobile-first designs.

Here is another resource to help with designing accessible apps: accessibility testing.

 

Conclusion

Mobile-first UX design is more important today than ever before. As more of the world accesses the internet via their mobile devices, the mobile-first design will become the default method of web design.

Mobile web design doesn’t have to be a pain. Approaching design from a mobile-first standpoint will allow you to build exactly what your users need on mobile, and will prevent your site from becoming cluttered and difficult to scale. Keep a few best practices in mind when building your next web page and you will find designing for mobile devices easy.

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Is Your Business Being Found Online?

Laptop Metrics Colorado

Free Digital Marketing Report ($150 Value)

marketing module lineWant to know how your business stacks up against the competition?

Read more articles about Business.

6 Strategic Marketing Solutions to Enhance Your Brand Image

  Are you looking for ways to boost your brand’s visibility and reputation? Implementing strategic marketing solutions can help you reach a wider audience, enhance your image in the industry, and ultimately increase your sales. From creating powerful visuals to...

7 Effective Tips to Promote Your Financial Advisor Business and Stand Out in a Competitive Market

Personal finance management involves making informed decisions about managing money, budgeting, investing, and planning for the future. You must understand one's financial situation, develop a plan to achieve financial goals, and regularly monitor and adjust that...

4 Reasons to Optimize Your Accounting Management

Did you know that your accounting management can help you increase the efficiency of your business? Optimizing your accounting is a great way to ensure your business runs smoothly and has many benefits. When you optimize this process, regardless if you want a boost to...

Cost-effective Video Remote Interpreting Solutions

Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) is a face-to-face communication service that allows interpreters to interpret simultaneously at remote locations. When video conferencing was introduced, it made it possible for interpreters to get their jobs done even when they were...

Product Mockups: A Crucial Component to Branding and Marketing Success

Mockups are a visual representation of a product created before the product is produced. It can test and evaluate design ideas and showcase a final product's appearance. Mockups are also popular in marketing campaigns and help businesses showcase their products or...

Interesting Facts You Need To Know About Roofing SEO

Today, there are a huge number of various roofing companies, so it's a challenging task to stand out and beat the competition. Still, you can use the advantages of SEO (search engine optimization) and find a way to take the top spot for yourself without the necessary...

Here’s Why Hiring a B2B Marketing Agency Can Be Invaluable to New Business Owners

  As a new business owner, you might have discovered by now that it is not just individuals that can be customers but also other businesses.  This realization opens up a lot of options due to the increased opportunity for income due to the larger transaction...

The Top Lead Generation Strategies to Boost Your Business’s Revenue

Are you a business owner looking for ways to get more leads and increase your revenue? If so, then you’ve come to the right place! In this blog post, we’re going to dive into some of the top-notch lead-generation strategies that can help boost your business’s...

Read more articles about business.

Why Outsource Your IT Support? 7 Reasons & Benefits

Why Outsource Your IT Support? 7 Reasons & Benefits

Your IT resources are a major asset to your organization when they’re working well. But as soon as something goes awry, they can become a burden. While you can attempt to fire-fight your tech woes internally, it’s often better to outsource IT support to a third-party...

What Do You Need For Creating A Good Online Course

What Do You Need For Creating A Good Online Course

You might be overwhelmed with all the technology and tools to help you build a strong educational program. But before worrying about which platforms and technologies to use, it's essential to focus on what matters most: content. The success of any online course rests...

6 Benefits of Low-Code Development for Non-Technical Businesses

6 Benefits of Low-Code Development for Non-Technical Businesses

  Are you tired of always being at the mercy of technical experts for your business's application development needs? Probably it’s a good time to turn to low-code development platforms. These innovative tools enable businesses to create custom applications...

Share This