Mobile First: Why should I design my website for mobile first?

Website Tip #10: Create a mobile first website.

To any business that reads this blog post I encourage you to stop reading, go view your own website on a mobile phone, and then come back to this post.

Alright, now answer the following questions:

Did my website load fast on mobile? [yes/no]
Did my website look good on mobile? [yes/no]
Did my website work well on mobile? [yes/no]

If you answered no to at least one of the above questions then let me tell you 2 critical things:

If you built your website around 8 to 15 years ago you probably failed to consider mobile phones and rightfully so, the desktop computer reined king of the internet.

Today the majority of people utilise mobile devices to browse the internet. Google noticed the rise back in 2015 and changed how they crawl websites for Google search. Only recently in October 2023 they announced they finally changed the default crawler to use the mobile first.

So, what the heck does that all mean?

In layman terms, Google discovers your website through its mobile version therefore if your website sucks on mobile then Google knows about it.

Not only that, if 60% of people globally use mobile phones to view your website, what impression do you think a customer will have of the business if the mobile version sucks? A bad impression.

I wrote this post because as a local web developer I see countless old websites designed only for desktop where I live in Adelaide, Australia. Not only do they provide a poor user experience to potential customers but they kill their own Google rankings. A loss on every front.

The solution? I highly recommend businesses out there to redesign their old desktop websites from scratch with a responsive design approach. The responsive design approach starts from a mobile first approach and ensures a website looks good whether a customer views it on mobile, tablet, or desktop. You can read more about mobile first best practices as recommended by Google itself.