In the digital landscape of today, mobile-first optimisation has become a necessity when designing and updating your website. The growing use of smartphones has caused a huge majority of the population to view a site first and foremost through their phone rather than their desktop. As of 2024, over 60% of all traffic comes from mobile. You don’t want to isolate this large number of people and you need to keep up to date with mobile first optimisation to show your organisation can adapt to the mobile world of 2024 and meet user expectations.

So why does mobile-first optimisation matter?

More than ever, we are reaching for our phones over anything else, whether you are browsing your social media platforms or shopping. Whatever sector your organisation is in, focusing on mobile optimisation is incredibly important for the following reasons:

1. A poor mobile experience could mean losing out on a large number of users navigating their way around your website
2. Google is now indexing the mobile version of your website when considering where this will rank on search engines
3. Statistically, mobile users demand a faster and more streamlined experience when navigating their way around a website. If your site is slow or doesn’t look right on mobile, they will immediately click off and you will have lost a user immediately. Would you stay on a website if it was hard to navigate and didn’t load fast enough?

I understand why mobile-first optimisation matters, but what can I do to improve this on my own website?

1. Make sure that your website is responsive for all devices. At PLMR, we make sure that your website works on all devices as standard. A responsive website will ensure that the site adapts to different screen sizes, whether that be a desktop size, tablet size or phone size.
2. Optimise your site speed! There are a lot of factors that can increase the speed of your website including; images, videos or files that are too large, plugins that haven’t been updated and lots of redirects on the site. Take a look through your website and establish whether your site is taking too long to load. If you were shopping for a new item of clothing and it took longer than 5 seconds to load, would you still buy that item?

We anticipate that as platforms like TikTok and other social media platforms continue to grow in popularity, so will the shift to solely using your phone to search for anything in search engines. I personally used to use a desktop to go onto platforms like Facebook but I now can’t remember the last time I used a desktop to view my personal social media platforms. If I’m going to a new restaurant, I would immediately grab my phone for directions, to find out the menu and their rating. Without even realising, we have easily switched to a mobile-centred world and so should your website.

Take a look at your website and have a think from an outside perspective if you would stay on your site based solely on the mobile experience you have.

If your website needs optimising but you don’t know where to start, contact our digital team here!