Why Your Website Development Strategy Should be Centered Around Mobile

We are now officially living on the other side of history. What used to be mere speculations and expectations, was finally achieved last year- mobile internet usage surpassing traditional computers. This was a landmark for two reasons- 1. It happened much sooner than expected, for mobile Internet share was just 30% till 2013 and crossed 50% within next 3 years; 2. The rise of internet usage on mobiles signaled a parallel rise of wireless internet, that enabled web to be truly ubiquitous and unleashed a whole new chapter of on-the-go connectivity and services. 

Now, if we look at the other components- websites and internet users, the statistics are even more baffling. With over 3 billion users and 1 billion websites, the internet is by all means a virtual world running parallel to ours. And here is the business part- for every product or service that a consumer needs, 81% of them start their search online. Yes, that’s over 2 billion users surfing from website to website to find what they need. So, no matter what product you sell or the service you offer, chances are you won’t be alone and the only way to trump all others is to outshine in your virtual appearance and ensure every time a user visits your website, they have to look no further. 

And that brings us to the critical questions- What strategy should you adopt for your website development? What should you prioritize? What should be the key concerns?  

While we are still years away from mobile-only approach, mobile-first strategy is something that has been a part of the web development industry for the last several years and is gaining ground with every new project. From large enterprises tweaking their existing applications to be more mobile-friendly to new applications of startups cantered around mobile devices, everyone is betting big to make most out the current mobile revolution. 

So, what is exactly mobile-first strategy? 

Traditionally, web development companies first try and make the best website they can for desktop. Then to cater to the mobile users, they systematically reduce some features and make some design alterations in the initial application. This process is sometimes referred as graceful degradation, and is now considered inefficient, even counter-productive. The alternative, referred as progressive enhancement, dictates that the web developers should first try and make the perfect website with all essential features for mobile devices and then make alterations to include superficial features for desktop users. This concept is what has been popularly hailed as the mobile-first strategy. 

But that is much easier said than done. How can a business know what is the perfect website for mobile and more importantly, which features are essential and which ones can be dropped to be later incorporated in the desktop version? While there is a general consensus for the first, the answer for latter will vary depending upon individual businesses and is something they must decide for themselves

So apart from the features, a perfect website for mobiles is one with highly responsive design. The one users find easy to navigate and where they don’t have to keep zooming-in and out to see the content they are looking for. While you get extra points for making the layout beautiful, clean and clutter-free interface is a must. In short, when your website is accessed by a mobile device, it should feel that the site truly belongs there and not like it has been tweaked and patched to barely match the needs. 

But that again is no easy feat to achieve, primarily because there is only so much elegance you can deliver while squeezing all those features on a small screen. Also, mobile devices don’t always have the luxury of fast and reliable connection, in which case, creating a graphic-extensive site will shoot-up the bandwidth and turn out to be counter-productive. 

Now that is enough of what your web development strategy should look like and things it must incorporate, it’s time we also take a look at the factors that businesses miscalculate and end up with terrible or mediocre mobile experience. 

The first thing you need to realize is that desktop & mobile devices are two entirely different class of devices and applications that leverage the large screen, unlimited power, stable connectivity, large memory and processing resources of desktops can’t possibly work nearly as smooth on mobile devices with strict constraints on all such aspects. 

The second, as briefly discussed above, has to do with the compromise or the balance between quantity of features and quality of design and responsiveness. Since there is little that developers can do about the hardware limitations of mobile devices, they have to make a crucial decision. Whether to build a feature-packed application that may have glitches at times, or an application that though has few features, guarantees exceptional performance and responsiveness. And it is ultimately the choice you make at this point that defines the flavor of your website and subsequent success it can expectedly achieve.