The continuous evolution of smart phones, regular release of newer mobile OS versions, availability of a huge variety of mobile applications from different app stores and high speed internet connections have completely transformed the way consumers use their mobile devices.
This has resulted in mobile users having overtaken desktop. Mobile users are now the most common internet consumers and around 25% of them exclusively use mobile technology to access the internet.
So designing your website to be aesthetically and functionally pleasing for mobile users can no longer be an afterthought but should be a priority when developing your website. Hence, having a mobile-friendly website isn’t just good practice — it’s a necessity.
Traditionally, the approach has been to design the best desktop site possible and then produce mobile variants by gradually removing content and functionality, stripping the site down to fit the reduced capability of smaller machines. As a result, desktop sites are shoehorned onto mobile platforms which often results in an unsatisfactory experience. Mobile customers are left with websites lacking images, Call-to-action (CTA) often obscured, links difficult to click and contact pages buried in awkward menus. Visitors won’t stay on your site if they have to pinch and zoom or squint at illegible type or worse yet if it runs flash or anything that requires add-ons to display in a browser.To make matter worse these users are then left to scroll down endlessly to access the content they are interested in. This second-rate experience will only cause customers to become frustrated and finally click away to your competitor’s sites.
The most common option for companies looking for a mobile version of their website is to build a mobile site. This is a separate version of your website that users are redirected to when they access your website via a mobile phone or tablet. The main benefit of implementing a mobile version of a website is that it provides an optimized view across mobiles and tablets. Alternatively, there are other ways to approach a mobile web presence, such as implementing a separate mobile app or the most recent and popular approach, developing a Responsive Web Design.
Image Source : Google
Websites and Web applications have become progressively more complex as our industry’s technologies and methodologies advance. What used to be a one-way static medium has evolved into a very rich and interactive experience.
Regardless of the above factor, a website’s success still hinges on one thing: how users perceive it. “Does this website give me value? Is it easy to use? Is it pleasant to use?” These are the questions that run through the minds of visitors as they interact with our products, and they form the basis of their decisions on whether to become regular users.
User experience design (UXD or UED) is the process of enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty by improving the usability, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the customer and the product.
No matter how much emphasis you lay on designing, in the end what comes to your rescue is a combination of UXD and a wonderful user interface that heightens the credibility of your mobile app/website.
Good user interface design facilitates finishing the task at hand without drawing unnecessary attention to it. Graphic design and typography are utilized to support its usability, influencing how the user performs certain interactions and improving the aesthetic appeal of the design.
A mobile user interface (mobile UI) is the graphical and usually touch-sensitive display on a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet, which allows the user to interact with the device’s apps, features, content and functions.
In a mobile interface, symbols may be used more extensively and controls may be automatically hidden until accessed. The symbols themselves must also be smaller and there is not enough room for text labels on everything, which can cause confusion.This is where SVG comes into picture.
SVG (or Scalable Vector Graphics) is an XML-based file format that enables developers and designers to create high quality, dynamic graphics and graphical applications with a great level of precision.
Additionally while optimizing your website for mobiles, AMP is a resource which must be utilized to the fullest because of the various benefits that come handy.
The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP) is an open-source initiative from Google and Twitter to improve the performance of web contents and ads through a publishing technology known as AMP.
At its essence, it’s basically a stripped-down form of HTML, a predecessor of HTML if you will.But fundamentally, it’s an HTML page designed to be super lightweight by restricting code to increase loading speed and reliability.
Image Source : Google
The differences in AMP pages won’t be immediately obvious to the untrained eye as the above example demonstrates (AMP page shown on the left). It is only when a user has knowingly clicked on an AMP search result or knows what to look for that they may identify the subtle differences. The speed of loading, which is seriously rapid, will also provide the biggest clue to the fact that there is something different about the page.
Web pages and ads published in the AMP open-source format load near instantly, giving users a smooth, more engaging experience on mobile and desktop.AMP provides a relatively easy way to improve the speed of mobile websites for publishers.
Image Source : Google
By ensuring your website is fully responsive and optimized, you’re more likely to attract a higher number of customers who’ll spend longer looking at your product or service thereby helping you to accomplish your objectives.