DEFINITION
What is Mobile-first Design?
This refers to a method of creating websites and online content for small screens to curate the best experience for people using mobile phones and smartphones.
It is important to note that in 2016 Mobile devices officially surpassed desktops and laptops as the preferred devices used to access the internet. More people not only use mobile phones to access the internet but they spend more time on their phones as well.
At the core mobile-first design is all about simplicity and minimalism. You can create a seamless experience for visitors. It allows you to remove all the unnecessary details and focus on what the visitor needs to see and interact with. With majority of people using low to budget phones any mobile-first website must be optimised to load fast across all devices and internet speeds.
Approaches to Mobile First Design
Progressive Advancement
This refers to designing a website on a lower tier browser/ device first, then working your way up. This allows for more basic features and functions and increase based on device size and browser.
This way as you work your way up you can enhance the basic features and thus the experience.
Graceful Degradation
Creating advanced website with more rounded features on desktop and higher resolution devices then cutting some features and content that become irrelevant as you scale down.
Benefits of Mobile-first Design
Optimising your website and subsequent content for mobile devices provides the following advantages.
Easy Navigation
Responsive design adapts the desktop site to the mobile screen by reducing images, increasing the amount of lines the prose occupies and reducing the size of navigation. Mobile first design creates a unique app-like navigation that makes it much easier to use the site.
Content Centric
When implementing a mobile first design you focus on the core content that the client needs to see/ interact with. It should not be a watered down version of a desktop site but should enhance the core experience of the customer.
Saves Money
Apps are great since they give your clients the service at the tap of a button, but they can be expensive to make. Apps can also cost you customers. When the service you provide is a one-time thing for a client it can be a hassle to download an app to access it. The answer to this question is designing your website for mobile. This greatly reduces the amount of time spent loading the content. Mobile first design has guaranteed 64% more conversion rates.
MOBILE-FIRST DESIGN VS RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN
Responsive Web Design
This refers to a website that fits the different screen dimensions without losing usability, clarity and fidelity.
Advancements in technology have made it easier for websites to be designed in a way that they adapt to the screen resolution of the device being used, or the area of the screen that the web browser has been allocated(in a desktop scenario where the browser is not fullscreen).
At the core, it is a series of flexible grids, layouts and CSS media queries that automatically accommodate for resolution, image and scripting ability. CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) describes how HTML(Hypertext Markup Language) elements are positioned on the screen.
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