How much time do you spend on your phone throughout the day? Compare that to how much time you now spend sat scrolling at a desktop screen – work and gaming aside.
We are very much living in a mobile-first society; a shift in habits that has been in the pipeline since the first mobile phone was produced in 1973. We all know Google holds the monopoly on a lot of things. The tech giant has a wealth of power at is proverbial hands and from this, can play God with a lot of different factors. Notably, dictating how a website ranks, depending on how mobile friendly it is.
Since 2016, Google has been experimenting with the implementation and effects of mobile-first optimization; this entails tailoring website content specifically for a mobile device. Traditionally user interface and experience (UI and UX) design would be based around the wireframes of a desktop website, with countless hours spent mapping out detailed user journeys. However, this time is now spent combing through how a desired end-user would interact with a mobile-first interface – something as a bespoke software development company we are all too familiar with.
Over the past decade, UI and UX designers have slowly but surely been progressing into the realms of mobile-first design. This is not only because it is now very rare that someone doesn’t own a mobile or smart device, but also due to Google primarily using mobile versions of webpages to rank sites. In the first quarter of 2021, approximately half of all worldwide web traffic came from mobile searches. The global population is most definitely in favour of mobile scrolling, as opposed to desktop searching. If you can easily access a website that is quite literally at your fingertips, in a matter of seconds for a large majority of your day, of course that is going to be your preferred method of searching the internet.
Due to natural progression, in 2018, Google announced that it would be expanding on mobile-first optimisation indexing and that companies should adjust their websites in accordance. Mobile-first ranking is not a feature that you can simply opt out of unfortunately. Mobile-first is the future.
Google decides whether a website is optimised for prime mobile use, based on the quality of imagery, videos and links used within the body copy and content. Alongside this, the search engine rates the loadability time of a page. End users are less likely to bounce off a page if it loads quickly, thus holding their attention. This, paired with fascinating visuals and memorable content, are the first steps towards a well optimised mobile-first webpage.
Whether you are adapting your webpage to fit the mobile-first criteria or you are creating a new webpage to enter the booming digital transformation the globe is currently experiencing, mobile-first planning will cause you to rethink what content should be most prominent on your site. What information do you want your desired end user to access and digest first?
Essentially, the same experience should be provided across all platforms related to your business. It is easier to scale a mobile-first design to fit the aspects of a desktop screen, opposed to vice-versa. However, this shift towards mobile-first pages will see the dissolvement of responsive web design. They will in time become obsolete and be replaced by newer, more efficient software development.
Of course, mobile-first optimisation will also be a big player in regards to SEO. For your business to stay relevant and rank well on Google, mobile-first content and design should be at the forefront of every digital marketer’s mind. Like for like content should be provided across all platforms for end user’s familiarity and trust, but also behind the scenes with finer details, such as meta tags and headers. It is also recommended not to cut corners by providing less information on a webpage. Google won’t thank you for that and it may harm your SEO. End users also won’t receive as much information as they may desire, resulting in an increased bounce rate. Mobile-first is a rapidly approaching future and now is the time to embrace it.
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