Mobile optimization, or designing an e-commerce website to use on mobile devices, can be categorized into two: being mobile-friendly and mobile-first.
Many brands have already started offering mobile-friendly versions of their websites. With the prolific rise of smartphones and tablets over the recent years, it just makes sense for your e-commerce website to be easily accessible to these devices too by being mobile-first or mobile-friendly.
However, many have not yet considered the value of mobile-firstness, which is building your website specifically for mobile devices. Whereas being mobile-friendly has you building your e-commerce website up then scaling down, being mobile-first has you building then scaling up.
In this article, we’ll be talking about why all business owners should be mobile-first rather than mobile-friendly. We will be discussing the numerous benefits of mobile-firstness and ways to adapt it to our e-commerce website design.
1. It Saves Time and is Economical
With mobile-friendliness, e-commerce website designers usually start by building a website for desktops and adjusting its features for mobile devices afterward. However, this is very limited as you’re only taking things out of a desktop-optimized site to make it work for mobile devices. In the end, your website might only perform the most basic functions on mobile devices.
Meanwhile, a mobile-first site, as we’ve already mentioned, is a website designed specifically for mobile devices. Once built, you can add more to it to create a desktop-optimized version. This way, you can have two versions of your site that are fully functional on their respective devices.
It’s like the difference between removing all meat products from a supreme pizza to make it vegetarian and offering a vegetarian option in the first place.
2. It Has Better Compatibility
Because your mobile-first website is fully compatible across all devices, your customers will have no problem doing things on your website no matter the gadget. Whether they’re on their laptop, tablet, or phone, they can go through each stage of the marketing funnel on one device instead of switching around.
Think about the last time you put off purchasing something because it would be more convenient to do it when you’re on your computer. Wasn’t it annoying to not purchase it right then and there? Weren’t there numerous times you ended up not buying it, either because you found a mobile-first option or had just simply forgotten to buy it when you got home?
Don’t be that annoying shop that can only be used on a desktop. When your target audience is shopping on the move, make sure you’re moving one step quicker.
3. You’ll Have Better SEO Results
Over 50% of today’s web searches are done on mobile devices. Because of this, Google has started rewarding websites with mobile-first designs with higher page rankings. This has been confirmed by Google Search Central’s section on mobile-first indexing best practices.
A higher ranking on the search engines leads to better exposure to organic searchers and thus, increased traffic for your website. So, if you’re planning on expanding your business (as all other business owners strive to do), then having a mobile-first website is the best course of action for you. Even if all your aspects of SEO work amazingly, you could still lose out to a weaker competitor if you don’t have a mobile-optimized version of your website.
4. You Can Write Better Content
There’s only so much you can fit on a phone or a tablet screen. That’s what makes it easier to identify the most crucial aspects of your content, keeping everything short, simple, and sweet. Nobody wants to scroll through lengthy walls of fluff text just to find what they’re looking for, after all.
Concise content is also easier to digest and navigate. Readers can hop on your website and easily find links to take them wherever they need to go. Do they want to learn more about your product? Click here. Do they want to read reviews and testimonials? Click here. Do they want to add to their carts right away? Click here.
Keep in mind that you can always have lengthier content on other pages of your website if your readers are interested in them.
5. It Improves Customer Experience
How many times have all of us come across a website on our mobile devices that really ground our gears? The font could have been extremely hard to read, there was too much scrolling going on, buttons were small and unclickable, ads were largely disproportionate to the site, and so on. Chances are, this decreased the quality of our customer experience. This makes us unlikely to visit the site again, or at least on our mobile devices.
In the same way, you need to make sure everything goes smoothly for your customers. Some might not be patient to visit your site again even on a desktop. Start by doing things like having easier navigation, simpler transaction processes, and larger texts and buttons and work your way from there. This will help elevate your website design!
6. You Have Higher Growth Potential
As we mentioned earlier, over half of today’s web searchers are done on mobile devices. And it’s only going to go up from there. According to Business Insider, the value of mobile-first e-commerce is expected to rise from $128.4 billion in 2019 to $418.9 billion in 2024. That’s an incomprehensible wealth of potential that, absurdly, not everybody has capitalized on yet. So, hop on that train as soon as you can!
7. It Helps You Gain Valuable Customer Data
Doing quantitative and qualitative research on your customers is super important. By doing this, you can get a lot of insight into your customer’s behaviors including their locations, browser histories, and click-through rates, among many others. With this data, you can then tailor your marketing strategies to suit their needs and fancies.
Mobile e-commerce is also a great way to collect contact information. This thereby expands your marketing lists for emailing and text messaging.
Conclusion
The future of e-commerce is fast approaching, and it’s on our mobile devices! As an e-commerce website owner, you need to switch to being mobile-first as soon as you can. You need to account for today’s rapidly-changing consumer habits. It’s proven to have numerous benefits like improved customer experience, better search engine optimization, and increased growth potential!