What Is A Mobile First Website Design Methodology And Why Should You Care?
The Mobile First Website Design Methodology is focused on the Mobile User Experience (UX) and addresses the following areas of website design:
✅ The READABILITY of web page content on small screens.
✅ A Website Menu Navigation that has a THUMB ZONE FRIENDLY Ambidextrous Mobile User Experience (UX) and has a CONSISTENT User Interface (UI) on all devices.
✅ A CONSISTENT Web Page Layout User Experience (UX) that can scale from the small screen of a Mobile device, to Large Screen TVs.
✅ Reduces the inputs from users by exploiting the ACCESSABILTY FEATURES of Mobile Devices.
✅ Optimizes the Web Pages and Web Server FOR SPEED.
Implement a THUMB ZONE Friendly Mobile Navigation Menu
👍 The Thumb Friendly Ambidextrous Mobile Navigation Menu of this website is positioned at the Bottom of the Screen and provides OPTIMAL THUMB ZONE ACCESS to both the LEFT and RIGHT Hand THUMB FINGERS.
✅ Email Forms that verify a valid contact email address domain name and blocks receiving emails from countries outside of the US to cut down on SPAM emails.
👍 I use the SAME WEB PAGE LAYOUT AND MENU NAVIGATION that can scale from a small Smartphone screen to a Large Screen TV WITHOUT USING CSS3 Media Queries and is compatible with web browsers running BOTH CURRENT AND OLDER VERSIONS of Apple, Android an Windows operating systems.
Optimize Web Pages for Speed
If you are using a desktop or laptop to visit a website, you probably are connected to the internet with a High Speed connection. When you visit a website with a Smartphone, you have to take into consideration the cell phone reception and speed of the cell phone carrier network (i.e. 3G, 4G, 4G LTE).
Anything that you can do to reduce the Total Page Size (HTML, CSS, Images, JavaScript, etc) and the NUMBER OF NETWORK REQUESTS, WILL HELP THE WEB PAGE LOAD FASTER!
✅ The ONLY JavaScript that I use on my website is for Google Analytics!
Graphics
Images take a VERY LARGE PERCENT of the web page size and need to be optimized by choosing the correct image size for the device and compression. An image should be used to grab the website visitor's attention and convey the desired message. External links within the web page can be used to further explain and validate the desired message that you are trying to convey and are not loaded when the page is originally displayed.
✅ Use the HTML 5 Picture Tag to display the appropriate size images for different screen size devices!
✅ If there are several images that are used in every web page, strongly encourage to use CSS Sprites to reduce the number of network requests to the server.