The world is in our hands. We cannot deny that we all carry a smartphone and, with it, we access dozens of pages every day. Today we want to explain to you what are the advantages of web design mobile first and how you can apply it in your next project.
Advantages of a mobile first website
1. Improve SEO’s positioning
One of the great advantages offered by the mobile first design is that you will have a better organic positioning in search engines. Those pages that are designed to optimize the user experience on mobile devices are more likely to appear in the first positions of Google.
2. Offers better visibility
It is no secret that more and more people use their mobile phones to access the internet. Thanks to the mobile first designs, we manage to create a perfect website for both the dimensions and the performance capacity of these devices. This makes the page look better, captures more leads and increases the conversion rate.
3. Encourages design creativity
Although the limitations we face when designing a web for mobile devices may seem like a problem, we can turn the situation around to use it to our advantage. We must look for innovative solutions and a usability designed for digital management to provide a satisfactory user experience.
➔ You may be interested: User experience and usability: differences and similarities
4. Easily adapts to computers
Unlike web pages responsive, which are created first for PC and then a new version is adapted for mobile, the mobile first is very easily converted into a web ready for higher resolutions. The resources needed to make this transition are much smaller than those needed by a responsive page.
7 tips to make a mobile first website
1. It offers maximum functionality to users
The first advice we can give you to get a web page that your visitors like is to focus on what is merely important to them. Eliminate everything that can be ‘annoying’ and accessory, favouring a minimalist design that prioritizes functionalities that bring value to the user.
2. Facilitates operations with the search engine and menu
We all know that fingers are not as precise as a computer cursor, so it is essential to make it easy for web visitors to use. It shows a small menu with well-defined categories, and prepares a search engine (always in the upper area of the design) with relevant results and the possibility to filter them.
3. Bet on the fluidity of the design
Before we talked about the difference between responsive and mobile first, and here we have to focus on creating a design that is versatile and takes advantage of advantages of a CSS selector as “min-width” so that the space is distributed in the best way. With this, it will also simplify the work of development, since you will not have the need for the designer works with multiple display environments for different devices.
4. Take advantage of all the possibilities of a mobile
We also mention among the advantages of mobile first the possibility of exploiting creativity to achieve better results. A mobile device offers many more options than a desktop computer, and you can experiment in your web design with the use of GPS, accelerometer movement, Bluetooth connection or gestures in front of the screen.
5. Highlight a call to the main action
Beyond the different intentions you may have when creating your website, it is important that you focus your attention on a clear and eye-catching CTA, preferably on the main page. This will make it easier to reach it and perform the defined action, without having to navigate between menus and subpages to find it.
6. Media Queries to play with the appearance of the page
Through the CSS3 and the Media Types, these Media Queries allow you to change the distribution and the way to display the elements of a design, always depending on the size of the device. Thus, we will be able to show or hide different labels, adjust the aspect ratio or the amount of columns that are visible or even the colours and the background.
7. Power your online store
The tips we are pointing out here are perfectly applicable to any web page, even an online store. It allows your visitors to navigate easily through the store, offering them all the necessary information and with high-resolution photographs. Consider device dimensions when creating forms, payment gateways, or an error message.
8. Apply continuous improvements to your design
Finally, we believe it is essential that you have an approach known as progressive enhancement or progressive improvement, which invites you to renew and update both the content and the presentation styles of your design.
Now that you know a little more about web design mobile first and different ways to apply -ho, it’s time to get to work! With a little trial and error, you will achieve very good results, and you will soon take advantage of all the virtues of these devices. Contact Doowebs for a team of professionals to help you with your mobile first web designs.