Why is Mobile Responsiveness Important ?

In today’s digital landscape where smartphones and tablets are practically like an extension of oneself, having a website that can provide seamless experience across all devices is no longer an option but a must. Not being able to cater for all user base will result in you losing potentially valuable leads and opportunities. This is where mobile responsiveness comes into the picture. But what exactly is it, and why should it be a priority for your website?

What is Mobile Responsiveness and Why is it Important? 

Mobile responsiveness is a website’s ability to adjust the layout and functionality to work seamlessly across various screen sizes and platforms, whether it’s a desktop, tablet or even smartphone. This ensures users will have an optimal experience regardless of their devices. But why is it important?

In today’s world dominated by mobile gadgets, a significant proportion of web traffic comes from people using smartphones. When you access a website that is not mobile-responsive through your smartphone or mobile devices, it can appear clunky, with unreadable text or buttons difficult to click. This can lead to a frustrating experience for the users, which mobile responsiveness helps to remedy.

Mobile responsiveness of a website is something that is already present in a mobile-first designed website, which might be the best approach if you’re looking to create a website from scratch. If you’re trying to implement mobile responsiveness to an already existing website, it’s highly likely your website is designed for desktop-first.

5 Best Practices for The Mobile-First Approach

A mobile-first design, which is readily mobile-responsive, helps ensure your website provides a smooth user experience on mobile devices before adapting it into larger screens, i.e. the desktop version. Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

1. Content and Functionality

In a mobile-first design, being ruthless is the key. Start by identifying the absolute essential features and content users need most while surfing on their mobile devices. This ensures a clean and focused layout on smaller screens. Prioritize placing the most important information out in the open for the mobile version, while leaving all of it out in the desktop version. This helps keep things clear and concise, which helps with keeping mobile visitors engaged and on track.

2. Touch-Friendly Design

When designing with mobile-first in mind, it’s important to take note that the users navigate with their fingers, not cursors. Design elements on the website will need to be catered for touch navigation. This means using a larger button with ample space in between and around them for easy tapping, avoiding anything that is too small or placed too close together. Additionally, consider incorporating gestures specially for mobile like swiping or scrolling through content. These gestures, which are familiar to the mobile users, will help to create a more natural and user-friendly experience.

3. Responsive Design Foundation

Having a strong foundation is important for a mobile-first website. This means incorporating responsiveness features right from the start. Creating a website with a responsive foundation ensures a smooth transition between mobile devices and larger screens. Imagine a website that can smoothly transition from compact, mobile view to a full wide screen of a desktop layout.

To achieve this, implement flexible layout features that can adapt to different screen sizes, because there are now too many devices in the market, each with different screen size and resolution. This includes using responsive images that are able to resize without losing any quality. This ensures everything will look sharp and function well on all devices. Check out how this would affect your branding through one of our articles by clicking here.

4. Optimization

When it comes to mobile-first site optimization, speed is the utmost important. Mobile users might be on limited speed and internet data. Keeping the loading times fast and the site light is crucial. Focus on optimizing images and videos to ensure everything is able to load smoothly. This would not only help keep your users engaged and happy, but it also has a role in improving your website’s SEO ranking. 

5. Navigation

Simplicity is the golden rule for navigating on mobile. Remove the complex menu that is overwhelming on small screens and replace it with a simple and clean menu that is able to be fully utilized on mobile devices. You may consider using hamburger menus or accordion menus that are able to save screen space while still providing easy access to the most important part of the website.

Mobile-First vs Desktop-First Web Design

Now, lets see the comparison of mobile-first design with its predecessor, desktop-first design. There are a few key differences between those two, which you can see through this table:

Feature	Mobile-First Design	Desktop-First Design
Focus	Mobile user	Desktop user
Design Process	Built on Mobile-first, scale up to desktop	Built on Desktop-first, scale down to mobile
Features	Limited due to screen size	Full features available
Benefits	Mobile-responsive from the start, faster speed, easier maintenance	More features and content can be implemented

There are also other differences such as content space, design constraints and adaptability. It is also worth to note that Google is currently using a mobile-first indexing, and implementing a mobile-first design might be giving you an advantage in SEO over desktop-first design. You can find out more about the importance of website design in digital marketing, including SEO, on our blog titled Importance of Web Design in Digital Marketing.

Conclusion

With the rise of users accessing websites through their smartphone, having a mobile-friendly site is no longer optional but a necessity. There are benefits and downsides in choosing either to build your site foundation based on mobile or desktop first, and it’s best to plan ahead of time based on the trends and technology advancement to strengthen your business position in this digital world. Check out the steps you needed to take in order to create a website for your business through our article here.