According to Perficient Digital, the majority of website traffic comes from mobile devices. In 2018, 58% of web visits in the US came from mobile phones, and 42% came from desktop.
People are browsing the Internet primarily from their phones, which makes optimizing websites for mobile more important than ever.
This has caused many web designers to adopt a mobile-first approach. Instead of prioritizing desktop, designers are prototyping websites for the smallest screens first.
Mobile-first websites tend to have less content, bigger typeface, and fewer complex graphics so that they look good on mobile screens.
But is this kind of design that caters to mobile users right for your website?
Why the mobile-first approach may not be right for your business
While it’s true that most website traffic comes from mobile phones, conversions on mobile are actually lagging behind desktop. Mobile traffic only converts at about half the rate of desktop globally, which begs the question why.
Dave Chaffey from Smart Insights may have some answers:
The reality is that while smartphone use is overwhelmingly popular for some activities such as social media, messaging and catching up with news and gossip, the majority of consumers in western markets also have desktop (and tablet) devices which they tend to use for more detailed review and purchasing.
Smartphone screens are smaller, so they’re harder to see use and see.
When customers are trying to enter complicated payment details or get a better look at a product, it makes sense that they would switch to a tablet or computer with a larger keyboard and screen.
Typically, mobile-first websites are more expensive to design. And since many of your customers are going to be switching over to their desktops at some point during the buying process anyway, it may not be worth the extra expense to optimize your website for mobile.
Here’s a checklist that can help you decide if mobile-first design is necessary for your business, or if you can get by with a responsive website design.
How to decide if you need a mobile-first design
Dig into your Google Analytics data
You can use Google Analytics to see how much traffic you’re getting from both mobile and desktop. You can also look at cross-device attribution reports to see how your customers use different devices on their path to conversion.
If your customers typically find your ads on mobile and then switch over to desktop to make a purchase, you’ll be able to see that.
Knowing which devices your customers typically make purchases from will help you figure out if you need a mobile-first design.
If a large portion of your customers are checking out on their phones, then you’ll want to spend the extra money to optimize your checkout process for mobile.
Consider your budget
Mobile-first designs are expensive. Even if most of your customers are visiting your website primarily on their phones, you may not have the funds to optimize your website for mobile.
In that case, it’s better to go with a responsive website design that automatically adjusts to the size of each user’s screen.
A responsive design will still look good on mobile, it just won’t be designed specifically with mobile users in mind. It’ll be aimed more towards desktop users and scaled down for mobile, which is adequate for your business if most of your conversions are coming from desktop.
Making design decisions for your website is tough when you don’t have any formal web design or development training. But digging into the data and seeing where most of your traffic and conversions are coming from can help you decide if it’s worth splurging on a mobile-first design or not.