Currently, more than 2 billion people access the internet using mobile devices. That number is only expected to climb in the future.
This is why it’s important to create websites that are compatible with any sized device. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best practices that modern web designers follow when designing for mobile devices.
User Experience
A positive mobile user experience has become a must-have for businesses that do their business online. This is because more people are interacting with brands on their smartphones than ever before. They are using them to make purchases, seek customer service, research products and more. A negative experience can quickly turn them away from your business.
The shift towards mobile-first development has also had a profound impact on web design. It has changed the way that websites are built, and it has shifted the focus towards creating a seamless, enjoyable user experience.
User Experience (UX) is a much wider swath than User Interface (UI), but it includes everything that users see, hear and feel when interacting with a product or service. It also includes their feelings, beliefs, perceptions, physical and psychological responses and accomplishments that occur before and after use.
With that in mind, designing a website with UX as a priority means that the user interface must be functional and usable without being overly stylized or decorative. This is because users visit sites to get information or accomplish a task, not to contemplate the aesthetics of buttons or menus. Consequently, mobile designs tend to downplay the “chrome” in favor of essential content.
In addition, a fast page load time improves user satisfaction and search engine rankings. It also helps to reduce bounce rates, as it keeps users on your site for longer. According to Deloitte, even a one-tenth of a second improvement in load time can decrease bounce rates by a significant amount. That’s why it’s important to keep your site running as efficiently as possible. Fortunately, modern web technologies are helping to make this more possible than ever before.
Simplicity
As mobile devices have grown in popularity, websites made by these London web designers have had to evolve in order to meet users’ needs. This has led to a shift towards simpler, more intuitive designs. Simplicity in web design can be achieved by using appropriate content, unified aesthetics, and search engine optimisation tactics. Ultimately, simplicity is an important aspect of user experience and can be used to increase site engagement rates.
As screen sizes have become smaller, the amount of information displayed on a website has also decreased. This has made it more challenging for users to find the information they are looking for. To make up for this, designers have adopted a mobile-first approach, which allows them to focus on the content most relevant to mobile users and then adjust the content for desktop users later. The mobile-first design process has also influenced the type of content that is published on websites, with a trend towards more visual, impactful content.
The demand for simplicity has increased along with users’ attention spans. As a result, many SaaS products are designed to look simple and easy to use. However, making a complex product look simple isn’t easy and requires a deep understanding of the users and their needs.
A common way to achieve simplicity is by reducing the number of elements in a design. However, it is important to keep in mind that some elements may be essential to the functionality of a product and should not be removed. For example, an app that provides users with the ability to perform transactions or shop online should include certain features, such as a payment platform. The removal of these features could have a negative impact on the user experience.
Performance
With the worldwide shift in internet access from desktop computers to mobile devices, it’s clear that users want fast and efficient experiences. Web design must take this into consideration and create a unified experience that is attractive, easy to navigate and offers fast load times on all types of devices.
The most common way that companies connect with consumers is through their website, and this first impression must be a positive one. However, repeated engagement will often occur through an app. For example, many customers will connect to a bank’s website to test out their services, but will quickly convert to using the company’s mobile apps for repeated engagement.
To accommodate the growing number of mobile users, web designers must prioritize the mobile experience. This involves creating a responsive web design that adapts to different screen sizes and other factors such as network speed (2G, 3G, 4G and 5G), bandwidth and stability. The best way to achieve this is to follow the “mobile-first” responsive design approach.
This means that when designing a new site, the mobile-first strategy must be incorporated from the beginning of the development process. This will ensure that the mobile experience is a high priority, resulting in faster page loads and better user experience. It will also help to reduce costs and time spent on the project by allowing developers to focus their attention on the mobile-friendly design of the content from the outset. This is a major improvement over the past when websites were developed with desktops in mind, and then scaled down to fit mobile devices. This method was known as Progressive Advancement and is now widely referred to as Mobile-First Responsive Design.
Convenience
While mobile devices may be limited in functionality, they offer unique advantages for user interaction. For example, cameras allow users to capture images that can convey a more nuanced message than text, and touchscreens enable users to interact with websites through simple gestures. These features can be used to provide a rich, interactive experience for your website’s visitors and increase user engagement.
In addition, smartphones have made it more important than ever to ensure a positive mobile user experience. Consumers access websites on their phones for a variety of reasons, including purchasing products, seeking customer service, and conducting research. A negative experience can cause customers to abandon your site and may affect your search engine optimization (SEO) and conversion rates. Fortunately, modern web design techniques make it easy to create a user experience that is both satisfying and effective on mobile devices.
As a result, mobile-first has changed the way designers think about user experience. With mobile users often multitasking and on the go, content needs to be brief and impactful. Users don’t want to waste time waiting for a website to load, and 53% of mobile visitors abandon sites that take more than three seconds to load.
Short mobile sessions also mean that users are more likely to encounter interruptions, such as switching between tasks or leaving the app for a quick phone call or text. In these cases, designers must ensure that the experience can be resumed without requiring the user to start over from the beginning. This means that websites must save context and make it easy for users to recover their place in the process, such as saving the last item they had clicked on or logging them in using touch ID.
Accessibility
Accessibility is an important aspect of modern web design. It ensures that all people have equal access to information and functionality regardless of their disability or level of ability. Many people have disabilities – for example, vision loss, mobility impairments or cognitive limitations. People with disabilities are increasingly engaging in online learning, and using mobile devices to browse the internet. The number of elderly people with disabilities is increasing as life expectancy increases. The importance of accessibility is therefore growing.
Creating an accessible website involves adhering to guidelines and standards. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a set of standards for creating accessible websites called Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines focus on making the information on a website perceivable, operable, understandable and robust.
The guidelines include recommendations for images, text, video and audio, navigation and form controls. They also recommend separating formatting from content to allow users to change the appearance of a page without altering its meaning. This is done through the use of cascading style sheets (CSS).
When designing a mobile website, developers need to keep in mind that the same accessibility principles apply. For example, images should be clearly labelled to indicate their purpose. They should have adequate contrast between the background and the image and be provided with captions if necessary. It is also recommended to divide images into essential and non-essential information. This allows the developer to determine which images need alt text and to comply with color contrast requirements.
During the interviews we asked our participants about their familiarity with various WAI guidelines. We found that, for the most part, our students were not familiar with the accessibility guidelines. However, one teacher did stress that usability and accessibility are correlated and that good accessibility leads to good usability.