Mobile-first Strategy: Should you ever build something first on Web?
Published: 2024-03-18 23:09:22

In this video, the speaker delves into the concept of a mobile-first strategy, emphasizing its significance in product development. They define a mobile-first approach as prioritizing mobile devices when building applications or products, highlighting its flexibility alongside other strategies like feature-driven or web-first approaches. Through personal examples, they illustrate the implementation of this strategy, acknowledging the importance of considering user behavior and device dependency in decision-making. The speaker suggests starting with mobile development first, given the prevalence of mobile device usage, while also mentioning the possibility of parallel development if resources permit. Overall, the transcript underscores the adaptability of a mobile-first approach and its potential to enhance user experience across different platforms.

### Summary

**Introduction to Mobile-First Strategy**

-   Explanation of what a mobile-first strategy entails.
    
-   Clarification that not everything about it may be immediately clear to everyone.
    

**Understanding Mobile-First Strategy**

-   Defining a mobile-first strategy as building a product or application with mobile as the primary consideration.
    

**Implementation and Examples**

-   Personal example of implementing a mobile-first strategy in the context of web and native mobile apps.
    
-   Discussion on how mobile-first strategy is not necessarily exclusive; it could coexist with other strategies like feature-driven or web-first approaches.
    

**Feature Considerations**

-   Explanation of how certain features might be more suitable for web interfaces due to requiring more real estate.
    
-   Discussion on supporting features differently on mobile compared to the web.
    

**Importance and Decision Making**

-   Emphasis on considering user behavior and device dependency when deciding whether to adopt a mobile-first approach.
    
-   Suggestion to possibly start with mobile development first, especially given the prevalence of mobile device usage.
    

**Parallel Development Consideration**

-   Brief mention of parallel development if resources permit, but acknowledgment that it’s outside the immediate scope of the conversation.
    

**Conclusion**

-   Reiteration of the flexibility of a mobile-first approach and the possibility of combining it with other strategies as needed.

### Podcast

Check out on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/5q7c9LrtCB67e71YbYgyY2?si=5csWsX2zRrCL4cSuskg6wg).   

### Transcript

**0:07**

Hey there. In this video, let's talk about a mobile first strategy and what that means.I mean, it's fairly obvious to a lot of first, but I just still want to talk about it because not everything is super clear and maybe something that's obvious to you may not be obvious to somebody else.So a mobile first strategy in essence means that you're building your product, your application with mobile, with mobile in mind, with mobile as the first thing in mind or maybe the only thing in mind, right.

**0:34**

Or maybe not the only thing, but if it's the only thing, then what does mobile first mean?So maybe, I guess it implicitly means you're building more than one client interface and one of them is mobile, but you're starting out with mobile.That's the gist of it, right.So in our case, we start out with the web app a few months later.

**0:51**

I mean, we've we've had the HTML file app alongside the web app, but we just launched the the native mobile apps a few weeks ago.So up until this point, it wasn't native mobile first in that sense, right.Then that's why I want to do this video because typically when you see that when you read these articles, excuse me, let's just wait for this plane to pass.

**1:12**

Sorry, we live near an airport, so there's a lot of planes.I know how many of these days, but they're generally a lot.Yeah.OK, Sorry.So back to what I was saying.So it's not necessarily mutually exclusive, meaning it's not like your approach is either mobile first or not.

**1:31**

It also could be feature driven, like for instance there there are some features that need a lot more real estate, so it's best to do them on your web interfaces.So you could have a web web first strategy, if there's even such a terminology, but you know what I mean.So you could start building those features out on your web interfaces 1st and then you can put them over to your mobile apps.

**1:54**

You might not support all of what it does you support on the web, You might do a subset, you might do it differently.Let's discuss that in different video.But I just want to take the example of that feature, which is primarily web driven and it might have a mobile, it might have mobile support as well because you don't want for that to happen, but it'll be a subset.

**2:15**

It could be different from how you end up serving the user in the context of that feature on the web.Now you might build some other feature in the same product which has a mobile first strategy because you feel like, hey, it's more likely that your users are going to be doing that particular activity on your mobile devices more so than on the web or just as much or equally so, right.

**2:38**

If it's equally then I guess you could choose one or the other.But given how dependent we all are on our mobile devices these days, I think it's it probably is a better place to start building it on your mobile and then you know build it on on your web.Of course if you have a bigger team you might you would do them in parallel possibly, but again that that's outside of this, this the context of this conversation or this monologue, right.

**3:01**

So that's the difference.Mobile first is where you want to start building that particular feature and don't look at that as always as something that's mutually exclusive.Some of what you do is mobile 1st and something else might be web first for instance, right. So keep that in mind.