Designing and Optimizing Website for Mobile: The Challenges, Strategies and Why You Should Act Now

There has been a phenomenal growth in the use of smartphones in the last decade and as a result in the numbers of mobile visitors to any website. Various studies and research have confirmed that compared to desktops or laptops, people now not only spend significantly more time on their mobiles but also shop or buy using these devices.

The global e-commerce market has already seen the share of mobile sales double over the last few years and this trend will continue to grow at an incredible rate. So, it’s high time that online businesses consider the criticality of mobile marketing as m-commerce is predicted to dominate online commercial activities and the trends of doing business in the near future. With this, you must understand that designing website for mobile or optimizing your existing website for mobile has never been so crucial.

In this post, we will first look into the importance of having a mobile-friendly website and comprehend the various challenges of designing a mobile website and optimizing a website for mobile devices. Then we will discuss some of the best strategies for designing websites for mobile and why you should consider putting mobile first when designing new websites.

Why should You Have a Mobile-Friendly Website?

You put a lot of effort and energy into designing a perfect user experience for bigger screens but creating a mobile version of a website often comes as an afterthought. If you still think it is okay to do that, think again.

More than 80% of websites have already been affected by Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm and they were pushed down severely in the search results. Several top online businesses have lost a big part of their sales as almost half of their traffic turned away when they accessed the websites from their mobile devices and had a poor user experience.

Big or small, no business can afford to miss opportunities for attracting and converting their potential visitors into customers. And since mobile devices now claim the highest share of searches and conversion rates, having a mobile-friendly or a mobile-centric website is absolutely essential for businesses. Whether you have an old website to update or you are looking forward to creating a new website, mobile should be your top consideration these days.

The Major Challenges of Designing Websites for Mobile Devices

Designing new websites for mobile phones and other mobile devices presents a number of challenges for web designers. Since it requires adopting strategies for designing the user experience for the vertical resolution before scaling it up for desktops, laptops or other larger display devices, the options for the menu, elements, content, navigation and tools get sharply limited. This is specifically relevant for mobile first web designs. Updating existing websites for mobiles or redesigning for responsive or adaptive versions also come with similar challenges. So, let’s find out some of the major challenges of this design process.

Usability

Websites that are designed or optimized for mobile fit the type of screen size on which a visitor views it. In the case of building responsive designs of desktop web versions for mobile devices, the concept is based on using media queries to selectively serve up styling as the viewport size decreases. However, for mobile-first websites, it is just the opposite with the added challenge of creating a finger-friendly design with fewer resources.

Since designers have to ensure that visitors can smoothly browse through the website without compromising on enjoyable user experience, navigation and usability are the main elements that they find tricky in both the cases. While a responsive design of desktop versions involve the challenge of reducing the degradation of user experience, a mobile-first website design involves the risks of lacking a more wholesome user experience. In a mobile-first web design, the designers have to be constantly watchful that the limitations don’t end up oversimplifying the design process.

Clutter

Smartphones, though getting increasingly popular, are not as powerful as desktops or laptops. Designers have to cut all the clutter that is usually featured on desktop websites when designing or optimizing websites for mobile because here the screen size available is too limited. This means that you need to reduce some of the content and offer only the important information that showcases your products and services in the best possible way. Cutting down the clutter when designing a website for mobile is a huge challenge for startups and SMEs as doing it the right way is the key to success.

Speed

According to Kissmetrics, 47% of visitors leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. This is because users nowadays do not buy the idea that a website can be slow and it is one of the most critical challenges for web designers when designing or optimizing websites for mobile.

Designers have to keep in mind that high-quality images and HD videos which look great on horizontal big screens can consume too much space and affect page loading time when it comes to mobile devices. So it is a big challenge for the designers to make the website engaging as well as visually interesting without affecting load time.

Synchronising Desktop and Mobile Experience

This is one of the biggest risks when adopting a mobile first strategy for your website as you have to be careful that your mobile website or app is consistent with your desktop version. So considering its effect on your branding and your users who access your business from both mobile and desktop, it’s essential you work on both versions from the beginning of your project.

Top Strategies for Designing Websites for Mobile

With the availability of a rich variety of mobile screen sizes, multiple screen resolutions and various mobile browsers, you should have an effective mobile strategy to stand out from your competitors. Depending on your business and the scope of your project, your mobile strategy may vary to create eye-catching content structure. Below are some of the top strategies that you should consider when designing websites for mobile to reach out to more potential customers.

Outline Your Needs for a Mobile-Friendly Website

This is the first strategy that you should follow. Define your needs such as if you need a responsive website that is accessible on both desktops and mobile devices, you need a redesigning of your existing website for mobile, or you need a unique modern mobile version of your website targeting your mobile users. There are different requirements for each of these needs and once you identify them for your project, you can determine and implement the best approach for your website.

Avoid Complex Designs

When designing for mobile devices or turning a desktop version to a mobile format, your aim is to attract users’ attention to your products, services, calls-to-action, blog posts, images, and/or other important info or elements. You can improve your website performance and speed up page load time if you focus on simplifying all the elements.

Web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and other modern tools and extensions help you create amazing websites that are simple in usability without having to compromise on the beauty and quality of your design. Use premium mobile-friendly themes to keep a balance between aesthetics and simplicity.

Since the mobile screen sizes have limited space and you need to insert content, create a single-column layout structure. You can use responsive web design tools to adapt the multi-column desktop layouts to single column mobile versions. When you use this approach for designing websites for mobile, it makes it easier to scale between different screen sizes and resolutions as well as flip between different screen modes.

Go for Interactive Feedback

Most mobile browsers don’t have different built-in visual indicators in comparison with desktop browsers. So, you should provide feedback for any action that is taken on the front-end of your mobile website. It’s a good idea when you include a specific indication to let the users know that a button or a link has been tapped successfully and engage them by stating that the action is being brought to effect. For example, when some element requires longer loading time, you can notify the users with an animation to display that the action is in progress.

Improve Page Load Time

This is one of the most significant steps of your strategy when it comes to designing a winning website for mobile. Focus on following the best practices to help boost the page loading time and reduce bounce rate. Follow the mobile-first philosophy or approach, use caching systems to boost web response time, optimize images, use content delivery networks, use templates that support Google-friendly AMP technology which makes mobile content appear immediately, and so on.

Test Test Test

Make sure to test your mobile website on as many mobile devices as possible to avoid bugs. You can use web-based emulators to view mobile platforms if you don’t have access to a lot of mobile devices.

Designing websites for mobile or optimizing them, however, does not mean you offer your customers only what technology can build. It is rather about offering your customers what they want. Also, the process does not require you to stop visualizing the possible desktop user experience.

Always remember that your goal is to create a simple yet wholesome experience for your customers who are accessing your website through mobile devices while also offering the best experience for those customers who are accessing your website through desktops or laptops.

Why Put Mobile First for New Website Designs?

Now that you know the advantages of designing a mobile-friendly website for your business, let’s find out why you should start focusing on giving priority to a mobile first strategy when designing your new website that will also work on a desktop.

These days responsive web design isn’t enough if trends are to be believed. Google has already rolled out mobile-first indexing and if you want your website to rank higher, mobile-first is the way to go. A mobile-first approach will help you build a better, faster site that will work perfectly on both mobile devices and desktops. It’s a way of reimagining content structure, content, images, CTAs, and communications with a focus on your mobile users’ needs. It will help you stay ahead of your competitors and even attract some of their share of mobile traffic to your website if done in the right way.

A mobile-first strategy is based on a progressive enhancement approach. This means designers start with the small screen first focusing on the limitations of mobile display and design a prototype that ensures a personalised and smooth user experience on the small screens. To make the new website perform better on mobile screens, designers preferably use lightweight technology, avoid heavy images and videos. Later, they implement more elements for an enhanced experience on bigger screens like desktops and laptops.

Some design technologies, tools, and heavier elements that are used for designing a great desktop user experience often need to be dropped or replaced for mobile UX because of usability and compatibility issues. Under such circumstances, a mobile-first approach promotes graceful degradation of the user experience in comparison to responsive or adaptive websites.

Is Your Business suitable for mobile first website design?

Improving your conversion rates by providing customers the best web experience on mobile devices is the main reason for considering a mobile-first design strategy. However, before adopting this strategy, you should always evaluate if your business is suitable for a mobile-first website design.

The mobile-first strategy is not necessarily the right method to follow for every business. Retail businesses like clothing, apparel, electronics, home improvement, health, beauty, and groceries are some of the most searched categories on mobile. You should consider a mobile-first website design if your business falls under any of these domains.

Even if you don’t belong to these categories, never skip assessing the suitability of your business for mobile-first designs. Make sure to study your Analytics reports thoroughly to understand if you need to adopt this strategy or you can simply increase your conversion rates by adopting a responsive design for your website.

In a nutshell, no business can afford to consider mobile as an afterthought as it influences and shapes your brand identity and popularity among your users. Mobile trends are growing and they will only get stronger.

Conclusion

Mobile is fast becoming the preferred online device for consumers. Business owners have to understand this and act right now. Whether you opt for responsive web design or mobile-first web design for your website, the right design is indispensable for making things work for any venture. A great design can influence the purchase decision of your visitors and convert them into your customers as there is a common notion that great design means the right product.

Get your website designed by experienced graphic and web designers who have a reputed record of launching successful websites for mobile. Need a free consultation for your project? Contact Leidsens to discuss and we will be happy to help!