Mobile-first design refers to a strategy used by web designers to first prioritize the need for mobile devices when designing a product. This approach can be carried out by prototyping or sketching how the product will appear on mobile devices. This allows the designers to scale up their designs from devices with the smallest screens to those with the largest screens.
Considering the fact that numerous space limitations can affect the use of a product on mobile devices, the mobile-first design seems to be a reasonable way to design products. The approach guarantees that designers can get rid of factors that may make the use of a product difficult for mobile device users.
In 2020, more than 4 billion mobile users accessed the internet. It has been projected that the number will even increase significantly in the coming years. Factually, many individuals cannot do without using their smartphones for a few hours during the day. All these figures are establishing the fact that a mobile-first design can help designers to take care of the needs of the product designers.
How to develop a mobile-first design
If you would like to develop a mobile-first design in 2021, here are the things you should do:
Have a concrete mobile-first content strategy
Don’t develop a mobile-first design until you have created a solid strategy. Your strategy should involve placing the most essential information on the home screen and then adding additional information at the back end. This helps to take care of the needs of the users as early as possible. Most users will only use a few seconds on your website. So, the home screen must be able to answer their questions.
If everything works perfectly on the home screen, some interested users may proceed to check the extra information available on the other pages.
Implement a mobile-first design
The next step is to create your product with a mobile-first design in mind. To do this, there are a few things you must do. Foremost, you should utilize HTML frameworks to optimize your sites for mobile-friendliness. In addition, you should consider optimization of the images on your website for speed as well as easy navigation.
You should also avoid using text links that can be difficult to click on mobile devices. Instead, you need to utilize image galleries and interactive buttons.
By doing these things, Google will find your website to be mobile-friendly. Consequently, the search engine will rank your website high on the search results.
Adopt a good user interface (UI)
One of the most prominent ways to enhance the mobile experience of users is to implement the right UI. If you build a website without considering the need of your target audiences, your effort will be likely futile. So, don’t hesitate to adopt an excellent user interface that can boost the overall experience of your users on mobile devices.
Generally, you should get started by organizing your web design to ease the process of navigating your website. Additionally, your website must be simple to use for everyone. Make it easy for the users to find any information they want on your site.
Lastly, you want to ensure that the users are always in control. Don’t allow any difficult pathways, unexpected changes, undesired results, etc. to distract the users.
You need the help of experienced web designers to create a mobile-first design. This is where the services of Lilo Web Design come into the picture.
How to test a mobile-first design
Once you have developed a mobile-first design, it is crucial to test it. For this, you do the following:
- Conduct detailed A/B testing for the product.
- Determine the areas of your website that you need to improve.
- Consider why each element can cause a problem for the user experience and create a solution for it.
- Use several devices to test your design. These devices should include laptops, tablets, as well as iOS and Android mobile devices. Also, you need to ensure that the tests run for a few weeks and are done by numerous individuals.
- Utilize different A/B testing tools such as Splitforce and Leanplum to test your product.
Once you have done the above, your product is ready to be launched.