Your Business Needs a Mobile-First Website – Here’s Why
Here’s a stat to chew over. Based on the latest web traffic figures, two out of every three visitors to your website are likely using mobile.
Yes, that’s right. As of 2025, just under two-thirds (64%) of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices, with smartphones accounting for the overwhelming majority.
Why does this matter? In simple terms, it matters because web design has struggled to keep up with the speed of mobile’s internet takeover. The majority of websites are still built on desktops, and with desktop browsers front of mind. Larger screens, landscape orientation, navigation via keyboard and mouse – desktop offers a very different interface to a smartphone touchscreen.
You can and should build websites that work effectively on both, of course. But the simple fact is that too many sites are designed for the minority use case first, with mobile an afterthought. And that makes a huge difference to the quality of the mobile browsing experience, to user satisfaction, and, crucially, to the business you do through your website.
That, in a nutshell, is why every business needs a mobile-first website these days. In this post, we’ll explain exactly what ‘mobile-first’ means, why it matters, and how our website design services can help you.
Why mobile first makes sense
When you stop to think about it, it seems entirely obvious that the majority of web traffic now comes from mobile devices. After all, 95% of the UK adult population now walks around with a smartphone in our pocket. That adds up to near continuous internet access. Just for sheer convenience, laptops and PCs can’t compete.
But desktop internet has been around a lot longer than mobile internet. And it was only with the transition to 4G mobile internet a decade or so ago that mobile began to match anything like the speed and reliability of broadband.
The tipping point when the volume of website traffic coming from mobile devices overtook desktop came in 2017. It’s been a gradual takeover, with it fair to view mobile and desktop’s share of traffic as roughly half-and-half for most of the past eight years.
But we’re past that point now. A two-thirds share unequivocally makes mobile top dog. And that’s why the time is right to switch decisively to a mobile-first mindset in web design.
What does mobile-first design mean?
As we’ve mentioned, smartphones and desktop computers offer very different interfaces. Different-sized screens. Touchscreens versus keyboards and mouse. The processing capabilities of mobile and desktop devices are very different, too. Laptops and PCs are simply larger, meaning they can accommodate larger chipsets and offer much more processing power than a device you can hold in your hand. That matters because, ultimately, web pages are digital files. There’s an important relationship between the size of any digital file, the processing capabilities of the hardware used to execute it, and the speed of execution. As we’ll see in the next section, mobile web speeds matter a lot.
Mobile-first web development and design is, in many ways, self-explanatory. It puts the interface, processing and other parameters presented by a mobile device first.
That means going a lot further than responsive web design, which was the web development industry’s first response when mobile browsing became a thing. Responsive design uses code so that the content, layout and style of a web page adapts automatically to the device/screen it is viewed on. That’s ok for cosmetic changes. But if you build a web page with desktop in mind, you can still easily end up with large images, videos or fancy animations that bump up the overall file size. And that will harm performance on a mobile device.
So, mobile-first web design is about working within the constraints of mobile devices. It means thinking about the limited screen real estate, lower processing capabilities, and even the fact that non-5G network speeds are still notably slower (and more unstable) than WiFi/broadband.
Designing with these constraints in mind pushes you to think carefully about content, layouts and navigation. Do you really need that big background image or multimedia animation? Yes, it looks good. But web design is always a matter of weighing up the positives and negatives in the context of the overall experience. Mobile-first design pushes you to weigh performance and usability a little more heavily against the wow-factor.
And that can very much be a positive. With mobile-first design, you have to prioritise the most important elements and content and cut the chaff. You have to think about making text snappier and more concise to suit the smaller screen space. Touchscreen navigation favours clear, well-placed cues, buttons and calls-to-action. This fits in well with the principle of minimalist design, which in itself is an important concept in web development that prioritises a functional, stripped-back, elegant design approach.
Another concept that ties in neatly with mobile-first design is the notion of progressive enhancement. Progressive enhancement means starting out by building the most basic functional version of your site possible – sometimes called a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in development speak – and then adding features incrementally. The advantage of this as a mobile-first approach is that it allows you to test functionality out for everything you add. Rather than having to start deconstructing a site you built with desktop in mind so it works well on mobile, you build up to the optimum version for mobile.
Why your website needs to be mobile-first
We’ve already given the most compelling answer to this – most people are now accessing your website on smartphones, so your site needs to offer the best possible mobile browsing experience. But let’s finish off by fleshing that out further.
We’ve hinted at the importance of page speeds in the browsing experience. The simple facts are that, on average, web pages take three-and-a-half times longer to load on a mobile device than they do on desktop – a difference of 8.6 seconds to 2.5 seconds.
As we said above, this matters. A lot. According to Google Consumer Insights report, half of smartphone users will abandon a mobile web page if it doesn’t load in three seconds – nearly a third of the average mobile load speed! Conversion rates drop by 4.42% for every second extra that a web page takes to load. And 70% of consumers say that slow load speeds impact their willingness to buy from a site.
So building your website so it loads quickly and efficiently on mobile is critically important. To underline this, it’s been found that sites optimised for mobile performance have 62% higher conversion rates than non-optimised sites.
The benefits of mobile-first are not just about speed, experience, user satisfaction and conversions. There are important SEO benefits, too. Since 2016, Google has operated what it calls mobile first indexing, meaning that its algorithms prioritise taking information from the mobile version of a website over the desktop version. If you want to rank as highly in search as possible, it’s now your mobile site that has to impress the Google bots.
If it has been a few years since you’ve had an overhaul to your website, or if you’re unsure whether your site has been built with a mobile first approach in mind, get in touch with our skilled and experienced development team and find out more about our website design services, and how we can make your site mobile-ready.
Frequently Asked questions
What’s the difference between mobile-first design and responsive design?
Responsive design is a coding technique that allows web pages to adjust automatically when they are accessed on different devices. Mobile-first design is about building websites for optimum performance on mobile devices.
Responsive design can and should be an important part of mobile-first design. But building a responsive webpage doesn’t necessarily mean it will perform optimally on a mobile device. For example, you can build a page with a desktop screen and processing capabilities in mind. And use responsive design to ensure elements and navigation adjust to suit a mobile screen. But you might still end up with a large file size that makes the page sluggish on mobile, even if the on-page appearance is ok.
How do I know if my current website is mobile-first?
The best way to check if your site has been built according to mobile-first principles is to test its performance on mobile devices. Look at page load speeds on smartphones, how the content and layouts look on a smaller screen, how easy it is to navigate via a touchscreen, how visible and easy to use buttons are etc.
If you’re unsure, a professional web development company like Key Element can help you audit your site’s mobile performance.
Why is mobile-first important for SEO?
Mobile-first web design is important for SEO because Google uses what it calls mobile-first indexing. This means that its algorithms prioritise the mobile version of a site when gathering information and assessing performance to determine search rankings. If your mobile web pages perform slowly with awkward layouts and hard-to-use navigation, it will drag your search rankings down.
Does mobile-first design affect e-commerce conversions?
Yes, the quality of mobile page performance has a big impact on customer behaviour and purchase decisions on ecommerce sites. Mobile users expect fast, intuitive experiences. If a site takes too long to load or is difficult to navigate, visitors are likely to abandon it. Optimising for mobile leads to faster page loads, higher engagement, and, most important of all, a 62% uplift in conversion rates.
Is mobile-first only relevant for B2C websites?
No. B2B businesses and buyers also use mobile devices. The reasons for taking a mobile-first approach are the same whether you are building a B2B or a B2C site. Most internet use comes through mobile. If you want a successful online business, you need a website that performs well on mobile in order to meet customer expectations and maximise conversions.
If it has been a few years since you’ve had an overhaul to your website, or if you’re unsure whether your site has been built with a mobile first approach in mind, get in touch with our skilled and experienced web development team and find out how to transform your site for today’s mobile browsers.
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Matthew Cowell
