In my class, Creating Mobile Apps with HTML5, I explain the concept of Mobile First Web Design in terms of cupcakes and wedding cakes.
The basic idea is that viewing a site created for desktop computers on a mobile device is like creating a cupcake out of a wedding cake. The only way to do it is by chopping off a lot of cake.
Creating a mobile site first, on the other hand, is like designing a cupcake. If you end up wanting a wedding cake later on, you can always assemble multiple cupcakes to build the wedding cake…with much less waste.
The design of a wedding cake created from cupcakes will necessarily be different from the design of a wedding cake that was designed from scratch to be a wedding cake. But, if your goal is to satisfy people who want cupcakes as well as people who want wedding cakes, and to do it with the minimum amount of waste and expense, making cupcakes is clearly the way to go.
Now, imagine a world in which people are actively avoiding wedding cakes in favor of cupcakes and where the percentage of cupcake eaters is doubling every year. This is the current situation with mobile web usage versus desktop web usage.
You’ve heard the stats about the number of smartphones exceeding the number of people, or about the percentage of people who no longer even use a desktop computer — so I won’t repeat them. If you’re interested, you can check them out here.
The bottom line is that if your website was created more than a couple years ago, there’s a good chance that it’s not mobile-optimized. Today, if your website isn’t mobile-optimized, you’re losing significant numbers of visitors — and very real customers.
Have a great day!
Sincerely,
Chris Minnick