Designing for Mobile First: Reasons, Challenges and Strategies

Adopting a mobile first strategy means designing your web experience for mobile phones and tablets, before scaling it up for larger display devices.

If you’ve been tracking the sources that send traffic to your website, the odds are that you’ve seen a steady rise in the numbers of mobile visitors. For some websites, mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic long ago. According to Smart Insights research, people now spend significantly more digital media time (51%) on their mobiles compared to their laptops/desktops (42%).

In the UK, 45% of all eCommerce traffic now comes from smartphones and tablets. Many eCommerce retailers have seen their share of mobile sales double over the last couple of years. Mobile now accounts for 40% of all online retail sales in the UK. In fact, I could fill up this post with stats proving the criticality of mobile marketing. Optimising your checkout and website for mobile has never been more important.

These trends should compel any online business to seriously consider a mobile first strategy…