Mobile Real Estate

The screen that really matters is now in your pocket. According to digital analysts Datareportal, 92.3 per cent of the world’s internet users use a mobile phone to go online at least some of the time, with mobile phones accounting for 56.9 percent of our online time and 60 percent of the world’s web traffic

Just ten short years ago mobile sites were either simplified versions of main pages or experimental design languages and structures including text-and-square-images. Crucially though, these websites were really only a place to read about a service or find a product, not one in which to immerse yourself in a brand. Over time and tech development, this read-through function evolved into more sophisticated applications and mobile functionality, and design in turn became ‘mobile friendly’—with standard dimensions that allowed for speedier, refined and engaging content.

Today most people will have their first introduction to your business through the small screen, and it’s not enough just to be ‘friendly’ any more — you have to be optimised to hold and convert that attention. And that means mobile-first design — designing your website around mobile users’ needs before the desktop.

 As an agency, Felix&Friends adopted this approach early on to make sure that we were offering the best user experience to our clients and their customers. Creating a website layout specifically for mobile that adapts to desktop considers the small screens’ limits from the start, as well as the behaviours of today’s consumer—visitors will likely access your site on the move and often in hurry, and their interaction with content is altered by the screen size.

“It’s not enough just to be ’mobile friendly’ any more — you have to be optimised to hold and convert that attention”

Designers need to be able to work cleverly and efficiently with the real estate in that small space, while also allowing the content to be breathable and images to be accessible. Users do not interact with your website in isolation and are likely to expect certain interactions on a mobile which will come naturally due to their higher levels of screen time on other websites (e.g. social media). A balance is required between creating a distinct design to let the brand stand out but not deviating from what will be considered a seamless experience in a mobile environment.

For many of our clients, particularly those taking bookings online such as hotels or requiring log in areas such as financial services, that seamless transition from web to mobile is crucial. This will come down to highly considered, strategic user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) that starts at the mobile level. Taking a mobile-first approach also means being able to optimise performance, including all-important access speed; recent research by Deloitte Digital shows that when mobile retail or booking site speed improves by 0.1 second, conversion improves by 8.4%.

The desktop website continues to be a digital portfolio-must of course—the hero product that allows you to articulate your offering in a beautiful and engaging shopfront. Ultimately though, if a brand really wants to tap into the flow of attention in a fast-moving digital age it has to ‘start small’. As an agency we ensure that the small screen becomes an experience big enough to engage any brand to its full potential.