The term “mobile-first commerce” has been around for a few years now, but it is only now that website owners have started realizing the fullest potential of the concept.
Most of your customers will discover your online store on a social media platform or even through a casual chat on WhatsApp. Once they click on that link and land on your online store, the rest of their purchase journey is guided by your website design and user experience.
With m-commerce sales contributing to 60% of global eCommerce sales, chances are those customers are looking to complete their orders using mobile devices. With that in mind, let’s understand the basics of a mobile-first design, and why you should consider it for your eCommerce store.
What Does a Mobile-First Website Design Entail?
A mobile-first web design is exactly what it sounds like — it refers to websites designed to load and run seamlessly on mobile devices. With a mobile-first design, you no longer have to deal with the traditional approach of building a desktop version of your website.
A mobile-first design ensures that the visitors accessing your eCommerce website through their mobile devices are prioritized. As a result, those users will always get a super-responsive website experience on your website.
It is important to consider that while a mobile-first design merely prioritizes the needs of your mobile users, it does not ignore the needs of the ones that are not. You can always opt to elevate your mobile-first design to perform well on larger screens such as PCs or laptops.
Why a Mobile-First Design is Crucial to E-Commerce Success
Now that we have learned what a mobile-first design is, let us look at some of the primary advantages you stand to gain from it as an online store.
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Future-Proof Your Website Design
The upward trajectory of global mobile users shows no sign of slowing down and is only predicted to get a boost in the future. So, if you are taking a mobile-first approach towards your eCommerce website — objectively speaking — the timing could not be better.
Not only will you be providing a consistent user experience to your mobile and desktop users, you’ll also be preparing your website to function just as smoothly in the long run.
What’s more, desktop versions of websites often lack the features and functionalities that might limit their performance on mobile devices. As a result, most website owners design a separate mobile-friendly website design while removing the desktop-version-specific features, thus damaging the overall website performance.
However, a mobile-first design ensures that the needs and user experience of the mobile users are addressed first, saving enough resources for you to expand its scope and make it more functional for your desktop users as well.
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Increase Revenue
With more reach comes more customers, and with more customers comes more revenue — the logic is simple. A mobile-first design will help you gain access to more potential customers than ever, and help you hit those revenue goals faster than you can imagine.
Plus, if you are thinking of market expansion, a mobile-first design may help you more than offering international shipping services. With an elevated online shopping experience, customers are more likely to hit on that ‘Buy’ button and seamlessly complete their purchases.
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Making Your Design Customer-Centric
eCommerce companies endeavor to offer the kind of online shopping experience that rivals traditional brick-and-mortar shops. This means offering customers the kind of convenience and service that they are used to getting in these physical shops
One of the sure-shot ways of achieving that is having a mobile-first design for your website to make the shopping experience friction-free for mobile shoppers. Choosing a reputed mobile app development company in Delhi can help you create the ideal online store for your customers.
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Better Aesthetic Appeal
Your online store could have a comprehensive product catalog and inimitable customer service, but none of that matters if you don’t get the first impressions right. The desktop version of your website might have attractive visuals and animations, but there is a definite risk that it won’t load or perform well on mobile devices.
When a potential customer lands on your website, you have a limited timeframe to impress them with the look and feel of your website. Having a mobile-first design means utilizing less space and can help you hit the perfect balance between minimalism and functionality.
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Boost SEO Ranking
For the uninitiated, Google’s recent announcements have made it clear that websites that take a mobile-first approach are likely to be ranked higher than the ones taking a traditional approach. Even aside from the rankings, there are a lot of SEO benefits of a responsive website design as user experience plays a key role in determining your SEO performance.
As long as you fine-tune the user interactions and work hard on implementing features that your customers prefer to use while shopping online, your mobile-first design will help you climb up those search engine rankings faster than ever before.
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Gain an Edge Over Competitors
Mobile-first website design is a relatively new development meaning many online stores may not have adopted it yet. If you are lucky or simply operate in that kind of a niche, chances are that having a mobile-first design will help you overtake your competitors — even the most seasoned ones — at a faster pace.
What’s more, a mobile-first design will help you get more customer reach and make your website more accessible to potential customers. However, the key thing to consider here is that you provide customer-centric features so that your mobile-first design hits the mark.
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Enable Cross-Platform Accessibility
By 2019, people using their desktop computers or laptops to access the Internet and websites had already dropped by half, thanks to mobile devices. Today, that number has dropped even more suggesting that providing cross-platform accessibility is not optional for eCommerce stores.
Even if a customer discovers your store while browsing on a larger screen, your website should work just as seamlessly if they decide to complete their purchase on a mobile device.
Concluding Remarks
With all of the aforementioned reasons affirming mobile-first website design as the next big development, implementing it is not optional if you want your eCommerce store to thrive. With the competition in the industry heating up more than ever, adopting a mobile-first design might be the key to boosting your revenue and expanding your customer base.
