Give Your Site a Makeover with Mobile Website Design

As some were quick to predict, the popularity of mobile browsing has boomed in a huge way in the past 5 years or so with over half of all web traffic now accounted for from mobile devices. This is why for anyone hoping to compete in the online arena, mobile website design is a must.

Failing to design for mobile can have a really disastrous effect on your user’s experience and will end up turning customers away. If you’ve ever been on a site on your mobile that just seems totally incompatible, which struggles to format or simply which doesn’t load at all, this is what happens when a mobile design is yet to be implemented.

There’s a variety of different ways you can go about designing for mobile, depending on the current state of your website. Here’s a quick rundown of your options.

Prioritise mobile
As we’ve said elsewhere the popularity of mobile browsing is greater than traditional desktop browsing. As such, saying no to the mobile web will result in a slow in traffic and may alienate new business. There are a variety of ways to tackle the issue of mobile design; here are some of the more popular and effective solutions.

Design for mobile first
One way to tackle mobile design, particularly if you’re designing afresh, or building a new website is to design first for mobile. The benefit of designing for mobile first is that a large screen can easily adapt to a mobile layout whereas a desktop layout cannot automatically adjust to smaller screen sizes.

Responsive design
The next option is to design a responsive website. A responsive design is measured and knows intuitively to adjust to a wide range of devices allowing for easy and enjoyable access to your site.

Web app
You could also when appropriate consider designing a mobile web app. This is a type of mobile website which will be accessed as usual through the browser but which looks and feels more like a native app.

All of these different avenues have their own pros and cons, and it’s up to you and your web developer to decide which will work best for your particular purposes. What’s sure though is that the investment is well worthwhile, and that any solid mobile website will soon see your site opened up to a far wider target audience.