Are You Really Mobile First?

How many times have you been looking on your phone at a website, got frustrated, and either abandoned the task all together or decided to look on a desktop computer?

I have done both and it is because in most cases, we are still designing websites for desktop and not how people use smaller devices.

I get it, most companies or organizations don’t have the staff, time, or money to build out a fully mobile experience or application. But we can do better to prioritize mobile design and help users complete the tasks on their phones.

It boils down to the basics: Who is your audience? What are they trying to accomplish? Then look at your analytics to determine the pages that have the highest number of visits from mobile devices. Look at those pages on a mobile device and see how easy it is to accomplish the task. Even better if you can do some focus group or usability testing around the top tasks.

Drill deeper to the analytics to see if users are completing the journey you expect. Heat maps or behavior maps can be helpful for this step.

If there are clear calls to action and the information is delivered effectively, then great job. If not, there’s work to be done.

Look at your page hierarchy and determine what the most important information is. Get rid of the fluff. That testimonial is great on a desktop site but it’s just noise for a mobile user. If you can a/b test great. If not, make the changes and monitor analytics for a couple of months to see if there’s any improvement on task completion.

Mobile-first is really a shift in mind-set. How well does your site perform on mobile?