What is user centered design?

User-centered design is the process of designing from the intended user's perspective, in order to develop a system that’s easily understood and used. The design gets out of the way and becomes intuitive rather than requiring the user to adapt and learn it.

Why optimize for mobile users?

With an increasing number of mobile users, search engine giants like Google have started to evolve to better serve mobile devices. In April of 2015, Google implemented a new mobile friendly ranking algorithm so significant that it was dubbed the mobilegeddon. This update caused businesses to lose search traffic and rank poorly for not being mobile friendly. Those businesses had a significant loss of traffic and potential profit. Suddenly there was a race to make sites mobile friendly without concern for the end user.

A mobile friendly site is not the same as a mobile user optimized site, and even though a site can considered compliant with google’s mobile friendly algorithm, it can cause an increased bounce rate. Visitors won’t stay on your site if content is unreadable in mobile, they won’t be engaged or driven to purchase products from your e-commerce site. To increase conversions from visitor to buyers is important to optimize for a better mobile user-centered experience.

Google’s move is a reaction to changing consumer behavior, more and more visitors are coming from mobile devices, improving their experience has become crucial to keeping their business. Mobile users want readily available information that can be read and digested quickly. By now over one-quarter of global web searches come from mobile devices and this is how businesses are found, and the tricky part is keeping the visitor and turning them into customers.

How do I get started?

Follow these four steps to get you started optimizing your site for mobile users.

• Understand the current needs of your users.
• Understand their capabilities.
• Understand their future goals.
• Involve your users.
• Apply what you learned to your site’s design.

Optimizing for mobile users can be rewarding and engaging for your customer. it builds customer rapport with your brand and most importantly gives them a great customer experience.