Mobile Web Design

Mobile First Design

When reviewing your website's traffic analytics don't be surprised to see your Mobile traffic at over 65% with desktop traffic well behind at around 20%.

While desktop display is an important consideration (especially if your site targets corporate decision makers), the mindset has to change to be first and foremost how the site loads and operates on a mobile device.

The exponential rise in smartphone usage has redefined how users interact with websites, making mobile-friendliness an indispensable criterion for success. Here’s why adopting a mobile-first approach is crucial:

Prioritizing User Experience: Mobile-first design starts with the smallest screen, ensuring that content is easily accessible, navigation is intuitive, and load times are swift. 

Boosting Mobile SEO: Google’s mobile-first indexing underscores the importance of a mobile-optimized website. Since Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking, a mobile-first design becomes a vital component of your SEO strategy, directly impacting your visibility on search engines and driving organic traffic.

Enhancing Load Times: Mobile devices, particularly when used on-the-go, may have slower internet connections or limited bandwidth. A mobile-first design advocates for optimized images, streamlined content, and minimized code, which collectively contribute to faster load times and a more seamless browsing experience.

Increasing Conversion Rates: Users are more likely to engage with and convert on a website that provides a frictionless mobile experience. By designing mobile-first, you’re catering to the on-demand expectations of today’s users, potentially increasing your conversion rates.

Staying Competitive: In a crowded digital space, a mobile-first approach ensures that your website exceeds the current standards and best practices.

Responsive website design

Responsive website development is quickly becoming an industry standard amongst website programmers and designers. At a bare minimum we believe all websites should be responsive.

The Responsive Web Design approach puts an emphasis on designing and constructing websites which are fluid and automatically resize or 'respond' to the screen in which they appear. The aim being to provide an optimal viewing experience for the user (easy to navigate and read) on a wide range of devices (from desktop computers to tablets and mobile phones).

Think about the diverse variety of devices available in today's technology marketplace. There are so many different screen sizes and resolutions available - and you can bet the number is only set to increase. In a way, a responsive website could be considered a future-proofing solution, as your website will automatically bend and morph itself to fit any new devices as they go on sale.

Mobile App development

A mobile app (or app) is software designed to run on devices such as smartphones and tablets. Apps are available to download through distribution platforms such as the Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store and BlackBerry App World.

Developing an app generally fits best if your organisation has a particular angle or niche which requires a highly interactive user interface and the use of phone features such as location services and the inbuilt camera. App-appropriate examples include mobile games, GPS and location-based services, banking, order-tracking and ticket purchasing.

Progressive Web App

Native mobile apps described above are not always an appropriate solution. Folks can often be reticient to go to an app store download an app onto their phone, especially if the app is only needed for a short time.

There is another way to get your content on your user's phone  - a 'Progressive Web App'.

It is possible to build your website in such a way that you can offer the user an option to 'install' it onto their device so that it appears as a launchable applicaton alongside all of their mobile apps. 

The design of this PWA can be very much in the style of your favourite mobile app, putting the user at ease immediately as they browse your event focused content.

Benefits of  PWAs

• PWAs can leverage local storage caches to increase the speed of looking at your content.
• PWAs install onto your user's mobile desktops right there next to all of their other native apps. It is also possible to use these caches to allow offline browsing of most of your PWA on the user's device.
• PWAs are easier to build and maintain than native Android and Apple mobile apps as they can leverage your existing website codebase (if done correctly).
• PWAs allow for instant updates. Mobile apps have to go through the approval process of the given app store (Apple can be brutal) and also rely on a user manually updating, but wih a PWA the apps are updated as soon as you deploy your code.
• PWAs don't rely on the Google and Apple 'store' for distribution
• PWA's bypass the App stores brutal terms, especially where it comes to ecommerce. For example Apple will force you to use their payment gateway and will take a minimum of 15% (and up to 30%) of your app transaction's value. 
• Many of your user's mobile devices functionality will be accessible to your PWA, including:
  • Geo-Location
  • Real-Time Camera
  • Data Storage
  • Payments
  • Biometric Authentication