Surely you remember your first mobile phone. If you are over 30 years old, it was probably one of those that was used to make calls, send text messages and play “little snake”. Little more.
However, times change and what we carry in our pockets today has functionalities that not even the craziest developers in Silicon Valley dreamed of a few decades ago. In this article we will reflect on the importance of “mobile” for the design, offer and sale of services online.
The same phone with which we answer work emails is used to search for a cooking recipe and to find a casino bonus in BonusFinder United States, for example. For better or worse, we live glued to the smartphone and this is reflected in the purchasing behaviors of users in all areas.
In the Global Report on Digital Consumption by the international consulting firm Comscore, the differences in the point of Internet access between different countries are reflected. The gradient runs from Germany (7% mobile, 77% cross-platform and 16% desktop) to Indonesia (88% mobile, 8% cross-platform and 4% desktop).
In Mexico it is in the middle of the table. In this country, 19% of people access the Internet mainly with the computer, 49% only with the mobile device and 32% do so from both devices. Hence the importance of having a company website optimized for mobile phones in this region.
According to the same Comscore report, entertainment, retail and social media have a digital reach of more than 50% on both desktop devices and mobile phones. This means that although people are more likely to read the newspaper or do a Google search on a desktop, as soon as they have to make a purchase or access their networks, they use both media interchangeably.
Financial services, on the other hand, are consumed mainly through mobile phones. This use probably has to do with the fact that each bank has its application and this usually has a design better adapted to mobile use than desktop use.
Mobile-centric user experience (UX) design is a strategy that starts with designing for the smallest possible screen, typically a smartphone, and then progressively improves the design for larger screens, such as tablets and desktop computers.
Although large companies have a specialized design team to find out and test how their digital products are used, any web designer can adjust the parameters so that the page functions are friendly to smaller screens.
The trick is to focus on the core features and essential content for your users, avoiding overloading the interface with unnecessary elements.
Traffic measurement tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics usually have a built-in function for measuring the devices from which traffic arrives to your website.
If you see that more than 50% of users are coming from mobile phones, it’s probably a good time to think about a redesign for small screens. The trend indicates that the “mobile wave” will grow even more in the coming years.
Finally, it is worth emphasizing that mobile-centric user experience design also focuses on optimizing website performance, accessibility, and usability. Therefore, a redesign results in an overall improvement of the website and, probably, more sales.
