What is the best way to design a mobile-first website?

2 Choose a responsive framework

A responsive framework is a set of predefined rules and styles that help you create a website that adapts to different screen sizes and orientations. It can save you time and effort by providing you with a consistent and flexible layout, typography, and navigation. Some of the most popular and widely used responsive frameworks are Bootstrap, Foundation, and Materialize. You can use these frameworks as a starting point for your mobile-first website design, but you should also customize them to suit your brand identity and user experience.

3 Use media queries and breakpoints

Media queries are a feature of CSS that allow you to apply different styles depending on the characteristics of the device or browser that displays your website. For example, you can use media queries to change the font size, color, or layout of your website based on the screen width, height, resolution, or orientation. Breakpoints are the points at which you change the styles using media queries. For a mobile-first website design, you should start with the smallest breakpoint (usually 320px) and then add more breakpoints as you increase the screen size. You should also use relative units, such as percentages, ems, or rems, rather than fixed units, such as pixels, to make your website more scalable and adaptable.

4 Optimize images and videos

Images and videos are essential for creating an engaging and attractive website, but they can also affect the loading speed and performance of your website on mobile devices. To optimize your images and videos for a mobile-first website design, you should utilize the srcset and sizes attributes to provide different versions of your images for different screen sizes and resolutions. Additionally, the picture element can be used to provide different formats of your images for different browsers and devices. The video element with the preload , autoplay , and muted attributes can be used to control how your videos load and play on mobile devices. Lastly, compression tools such as TinyPNG or HandBrake can be used to reduce the file size and quality of your images and videos without compromising their appearance.

5 Simplify navigation and content

Navigation and content are essential for a mobile-first website design, but they can be tricky to get right. You need to make sure that your navigation and content are easily accessible and useable on mobile devices without making the page too cluttered. To simplify your navigation and content, consider using a hamburger menu, a tab bar, or a bottom navigation. Icons, labels, and tooltips can help you convey the meaning of your navigation elements. Collapsible menus, accordions, or modals can be used to hide or show secondary or tertiary navigation elements. Furthermore, use headings, subheadings, bullets, lists, and whitespace to organize your content. To communicate effectively and concisely, use short sentences, paragraphs, and words. Images, videos, charts, graphs or animations can also supplement or illustrate your content.

6 Test and refine your website

The final step of designing a mobile-first website is to test and refine your website on different devices, browsers, and scenarios. You need to make sure that your website works well and looks good on all possible screen sizes and orientations, as well as on different network conditions and speeds. You can use tools, such as Chrome DevTools, BrowserStack, or Lighthouse, to test and debug your website on various devices and browsers. You can also use tools, such as Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or WebPageTest, to measure and improve the performance and speed of your website. You should also collect feedback from your users and analyze their behavior and satisfaction using tools, such as Google Analytics, Hotjar, or UserTesting.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?