What is mobile first?
If you have never encountered the term “Mobile first” before, rest assured that you will hear about it in the future. This approach to website building has become very important over the past few years. The focus of this approach is on the functions and web design for mobile devices.
What does this mean and what are the differences? Isn’t my website already responsive?
What is the difference between a responsive and a mobile first web design? The difference is in the approach, i.e. the starting point used for website building. The responsive web design, UX/UI is primarily made for desktop computers and then adjusted for mobile devices, while the mobile first UX/UI is primarily made for mobile devices.
Why are UX and UI important?
In order to answer this question, first we need to understand what UX and UI are. The goal of UX, i.e. User Experience design, is to create a website or application that is easy to use and delightful to interact with. The users would want to revisit such a website. UI, i.e. User Interface design, is what we see when we use the application, such as the fonts, colour scheme, images and spacing, icons, buttons, etc. For display on a mobile phone, all these elements cannot be the same as for the display on a desktop; the eye reacts differently to a larger viewing area, and differently to a smaller one.
Why mobile first?
- Google favours websites created using the mobile first technique;
- The websites load quicker and are preferred by users. Even if you are well positioned on Google search, if visitors don’t have good visibility of the website or the form of content is not convenient for them to use, they will quickly leave the website, which signals to Google that something is wrong;
- Google uses two types of crawlers. Some scan the mobile version of the site, while others scan the desktop version, but from January 2021, only data collected by smartphone Googlebots will be used for positioning on Google, that is, all websites will be treated as if they were created primarily for mobile devices;
- Bear in mind that 65-75% of internet traffic goes through mobile phones.
