According to comScore, people now spend 60% of their digital media time on mobile devices. This shift to heavy mobile usage has been swift, with a dramatic increase in mobile traffic occurring in only the last five years. Certain segments of the population have even skipped the desktop experience completely—their first, and perhaps only, interactions with the Internet are via mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. This is especially common in countries that are leap-frogging to mobile devices from no device (computer or otherwise) at all.
Whatever the composition of your target audience, offering a mobile experience to customers and leads is undeniably important. The three tips below can help you ensure that your mobile design is one that attracts and retains consumers, rather than discouraging them.
1. Design with screen size in mind
The average smartphone’s screen ranges in size from four to six inches, and great mobile design keeps this range in mind. Simply porting your desktop experience to mobile can result in text that is too small or text that is arranged in prohibitively dense blocks, as well as a host of other layout issues.
Rather than contorting your desktop experience into a mobile experience, consider designing your mobile interfaces from scratch using responsive web design. With responsive web design, layouts are controlled by relative proportions—not specific pixel sizes. This allows for a more friendly user experience across multiple screen sizes.