Is “Mobile First” the Best Approach to Website Design?

Is “Mobile First” the Best Approach to Website Design?

Lately them “Mobile First” has been doing the rounds in the design industry and many consider it to be the best approach to follow. Even though many of your customers have started using their mobile phones as their primary device to login to the internet, still there are people who use desktops and laptops for accessing the internet. So “Mobile First” is not always a wise approach to follow. In this age of responsive design, it is better to go with a design that is responsive with all your devices including your laptops, desktop, smartphone and tablets.

Mobile First is a strategy followed by many web design companies to provide importance to the look and feel of the website on a mobile phone or a table than on a desktop or a laptop. But according your analytics records and other statistics that you’ve found that most of your users are accessing your websites from mobile phones, then you may consider going this way.

So if you are confused you go with a Mobile First approach or the responsive design method, then you better sit back and analyze your business goals, your audience, their age group, demographics etc. Many make a wild assumption before jumping into the facts to go with the Mobile First approach. Even though mobile device sales has skyrocketed in the past few years with over 85% of the mobile phones sold in this period are capable of accessing the web, still cannot leave out people using laptops and desktops.

According to a latest statistic that 25% of mobile users in the US use only their mobile phones for accessing the web. That leaves that still 75% of people using mobile phones don’t always use their mobile phones for accessing the internet. Even there are a major chunk of users who switch between the two often. So better take a good look about the majority of your users, how do they access your website, their profession and so on? The more information you have on the table will help you take a decisive approach.

Why not shoot an email to your customers and ask them directly?

No one is denying the fact that mobile is the future and you should concentrate more on that aspect, but it will definitely take some time before you shift to a 100% mobile first approach. Because if you go in that direction right away, then you may stand to lose a large portion of customers as they will dejected not seeing your website responding that well in their PCs. They are the customers who’ve travelled with you all the years, supported all your major achievement and even criticized you for your errors. So always make sure to keep them on board and allow some time for them to look forward to the future and may be they will also shift to mobile-first approach in terms of accessing the web.