With almost 89% of the world population using smartphones, it is evident that these devices have become an integral part of our lives. While everyone uses it for purposes beyond communication and entertainment, businesses need to grab every opportunity to be mobile-ready. How can one achieve it?

Mobile-first design approach! It is the process of planning and developing a website keeping in mind the mobile-users first. This methodology of development changed from desktop-first, which has always been the way, reacting to the surge in mobile internet users around the world.

With the mobile-first approach, web designers can start product design for mobile devices first. This can be done by sketching or prototyping the web app’s design for the smallest screen first and gradually working up to larger screen sizes.

Prioritizing design for mobiles is a wise decision as there are space limitations in devices with smaller screen sizes. Hence, teams need to ensure that the key elements of the website are prominently displayed for anyone using those screens.

Advantages of Mobile-First Design:

Like every methodology and approach, there are advantages and disadvantages to mobile-first design as well. Let's start by taking a look at five big advantages.

1. Appeals to a Majority of Users

Since the days of desktop superiority are over, the most important advantage of mobile-first design is that it appeals to the majority of users. Today, over 50% of internet users are on mobile devices. The thumb rule of marketing is to know your audience in order to meet them where they are. Since mobile users now comprise the majority of internet traffic, it makes sense to start your design using mobile screen dimensions, reflecting and optimizing the site content based on consumer conventions.

2. Prioritized Content

Website designers can give their best to prioritize and display information in an engaging way in the Mobile-first design. Since you don’t have much space, you need to pick and choose only the most important content to include. This helps you eliminate fluff that only bogs down your website and distracts users. It’ll make your website designs cleaner, more efficient, and more concise. In practice, mobile-first design makes you a better website designer.

3. Less Buggy, More Engaging

Mobile websites are simple with simpler coding whereas desktop sites are complicated. They use a complex code for more styling options. When you start with a complicated desktop site and boil it down to a mobile site (desktop-first approach), all the complicated code needs to be reorganized to work on mobile.

When you begin with the simple mobile code, it ensures all your design elements will work on mobile devices because that’s what it’s built for! You won’t have to worry about pesky bugs hurting the UX of your website. As you “progressively enhance,” you can add more content and complexities, but your simple mobile code stays the same.

4. More Responsive for Better UX

Users interact with mobile sites much differently than with desktop sites. When’s the last time you swiped your computer screen? When you build a website specifically for mobile, you can create a user experience that’s designed for mobile, not just adapted from desktop. The better the UX, the more likely users are to visit your website, and the higher your conversion rates will climb.

5. Faster Load Times

The more content you have on your website, the longer it’ll take to load. When you start with a desktop site, you cram in all the pictures, videos, long-form content, and graphics you can find to pretty it up. While that’s perfectly acceptable, it could hinder your mobile site’s performance. Mobile sites have faster load times as they do not function like desktop sites, which also helps with better SEO.

Disadvantages of Mobile-First Design:

Despite all its amazing benefits, there are actually some disadvantages to mobile-first design. Here are two of them.

1. Not Easy to Work With

Change means learning to do things in a different way. Starting with a mobile-first design has been described as “neither fun nor easy” by several website designers around the internet.

Taking a mobile-first approach requires a different way of thinking. You’ll have to take the time to learn the tricks, experiment on what works, and figure out new design methods if you really want to create a memorable mobile-first experience.

2. Restrictive for Both Space and Creativity

Obviously, mobile sites don’t have as much space as desktop sites. This means you’ll have to be selective with the content you include. Plus, it restricts many of the creative design elements you can use for desktop sites, which can be quite frustrating.

So when should you choose mobile-first design for your business?

It’s important to consider the specific case when choosing between a desktop-first or mobile-first approach, but here are some broad recommendations to help you get started:

You should go for mobile-first approach for listed scenarios:

• The primary use will be on mobile
• The user flow is simple
• The industry in question is using mobile-first design
• Users tend to use your website or app on-the-go
• Your app or website requires simple features

You can avoid mobile-first design when:

• The primary use will be on desktop
• The user flow is complex
• The industry in question serves their users primarily via desktop
• Users tend to prefer using your website or app at their computers
• Your app or website has complex features

Conclusion

At this point, we hope the idea of designing and building for mobile first has given you lots of big ideas for the web. Today’s mobile device is our true personal computer: always with us, connected to the network, and filled with new capabilities for getting things done, communicating with each other, and just killing some time. Starting with this personal and portable device in mind first allows us to:

• Take advantage of the enormous growth in mobile internet usage and find new ways for people to use our websites and applications.
• Embrace mobile constraints to focus and prioritize the services we’re designing and building.
• Use mobile capabilities to innovate the complete customer experience.
• Take what we know about designing

Not sure if your business still needs to have a mobile-first approach? Wish to get started but don’t know how to? Need a helping hand to bring your mobile-friendly website to reality?

Drop a Hi! at marketing@altudo.co and our team of experts will help you in creating a mobile-first experience for your audience. With the latest technology and market understanding, our team at Altudo will help you understand the market trends, customer demands and build a mobile-first experience that will offer better engagement and higher ROIs.