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Posted on 6 Feb 2014 at 13:20

Kevin Partner reveals the success he's had targeting his website to mobile users

The traffic arriving at my online retail site from mobile devices has increased by 2,584% since 2010.

No, I haven’t inserted a payday loan company’s APR by mistake, and yes, I accept it started from a low base. But during that period, the traffic from laptop and desktop computers increased by only 51.4%, and on 12 October 2013, mobile visits came within a whisker of outnumbering both.

It’s only a matter of time before mobile visits are the majority.

It’s only a matter of time before mobile visits are the majority

We’ve reached a tipping point. This is an issue no online-business owner can afford to ignore. This trend away from desktop computers and towards smartphones and tablets represents the biggest change for website owners since the introduction of broadband.

While the better e-commerce platforms already offer a mobile-friendly version of your store to users of such devices, the features and customisation options for the mobile versions lag far behind the desktop shop (at least in the case of Bigcommerce). This is something they’ll have to tackle soon. Otherwise, shop owners will end up presenting their full storefront to a minority of visitors.

Knickers in a knot

Hold on, though – are we twisting our knickers unduly? Most mobile versions of websites and online shops were designed for devices that were slower than “real” computers and possessed lower-definition displays, but that was yesterday.

The screen resolution and processing power of top-end tablets such as the Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HDX and full-fat iPad are almost a match for today’s laptops, to the extent that it’s feasible to offer a single experience for both tablet and desktop. Smartphones are another matter: although their screen resolutions continue to climb, they remain so small that there’s a case for keeping a mobile version.

This is especially important for e-commerce sites, which tend to be information-heavy and require customers to type in credit-card details. Deciding which users on which platforms should see which user experience becomes tricky, and can be resolved only by testing. For owners of blogs and standard business websites, however, there’s a simpler solution – go responsive.

I run a blog separately from my online retailer; by keeping it on an independent domain, its links to the e-commerce site boost its search-engine ranking. This separation also makes it possible to choose the right tool for the job, which in this case is WordPress.

Until now, my approach to website design has been to design for the desktop and then apply a separate, more restricted theme for mobiles, but I no longer think this is the best way.

Mobile first

My blog receives much the same proportion of mobile traffic as my e-commerce site; mobile will almost certainly account for the most hits by early 2014. This means I must design with both in mind. In fact, there’s an argument for favouring mobile, given that this trend is likely to continue.

The shift of traffic from traditional computers to mobile devices is so seismic that you’d have to deliberately look the other way to miss it

Therefore I’m inclined to start by applying a prebuilt responsive design and then modifying it, rather than starting with a clean slate. The built-in WordPress theme is ever-more mobile-friendly, but the aptly named Responsive theme from CyberChimps is top of the tree in my experience.

Responsive themes usually work by dynamically rearranging screen elements to fit the width of the device on which they’re being viewed, which means shrinking two- or three-column designs by tiling the columns one above the other on narrow screens. Obviously, this places certain restrictions on the design, but it’s a worthwhile sacrifice if you want to appeal to the mobile audience.

I took the plunge and re-themed my blog using the Pro version of Responsive, since it makes better sense for the projects and recipes it contains to be viewed on tablets than laptops.

As a result, some pages now require two taps rather than a single click, but the overall experience is better. Total traffic has remained at the expected level, the number of pages the average mobile user views during a visit has increased, and the number viewed by desktop users has remained stable. So far, so good, but I’ll keep a close eye on the effect of this transition to mobile over the coming months.

I’ve often heard it said that the key to business success is the ability to spot trends, but frankly the shift of traffic from traditional computers to mobile devices is so seismic that you’d have to deliberately look the other way to miss it. And we know how dangerous that can be...

Read more: Why web design must be mobile first | Enterprise | Real World Computing | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/386947/why-web-design-must-be-mobile-first#ixzz2sasCwOAe