In 2015 the users have spoken. Mobile First is the way to go!

Should we go “Mobile First” with our Product?

Should we choose the “Mobile First” approach for our startup’s product is one question we get to hear a lot. It’s almost as vital as “To be or not to be” in 2015. If you are still mulling about this, then stop and just go Mobile First!

A couple of years ago, there wasn’t enough data (and smartphone penetration) to justify the Mobile First approach. However a lot has changed over past couple of years. Smartphones are everywhere and people are spending more and more time with their phones. In this article, we will present you the data from financial earnings reports released by publicly traded tech companies, which clearly shows mobile is the way forward.

Mobile is bringing in the moolah for Facebook

Facebook released its 2015 Q2 earnings report on July, 29th. According to the report:

• Mobile DAUs (Daily Active Users) – Mobile DAUs were 844 million (of 968 million in total) on average for June 2015, an increase of 29% year-over-year.
• Mobile MAUs (Monthly Active Users) – Mobile MAUs were 1.31 billion (of 1.49 billion in total) as of June 30, 2015, an increase of 23% year-over-year.
• Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 76% of advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2015, up from approximately 62% of advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2014.

Twitter users are mainly using it on mobile

As per Twitter’s 2015 Q2 earnings report, 80% of its 318 million monthly active users are using the microblogging service from their mobile.

For LinkedIn 80% of sponsored updates come from mobile

In their 2015 Q2 earnings report, LinkedIn revealed that mobile represents 52% of overall traffic on their website. This has resulted into 80% of sponsored updates coming from mobile.

Google and YouTube: Half of the video views are on Mobile

After declaring better than expected profits, Google gained a record $65 billion in one day. One of the main factors, which made this possible, was the announcement that the watch time on YouTube rose by 60% in the second quarter and the video service had more viewers on mobile alone than any other US cable network.

The official YouTube stats page states that half of the video views come from mobile and the mobile revenue is up by 100% y/y.

Yahoo: Mobile revenue an area of growth

As per the Q2 earnings report published by Yahoo, mobile represents 22% of its total revenue, a jump from 16% compared to same period last year.

If we compare Yahoo’s statistics to other companies, it clearly shows that Yahoo has failed to profit from the mobile revolution that’s currently witnessed all over the world.

Zynga: Mobile bookings 63% of total bookings in 2015 Q1

Zynga is yet to announce its 2015 Q2 earnings (Scheduled for August 6). However, as per their 2015 Q1 report, their mobile bookings stood at 63% of the total bookings which 84% up year over year.

Mobile First is the way to go

The services mentioned above are few of the most used in the world by an average consumer. As you must have already concluded, the stats above clearly show that there is strong preference towards mobile in the usage pattern of the average consumer. So if you are starting a B2C startup in 2015, it makes strong sense that you should launch mobile first and then eventually create your desktop product once you have achieved a decent traction for your mobile app.

Why Mobile First?

With Mobile First, we are in a process of launching adaptive, future-friendly websites which keeps the media and content featured on a site from being far too heavy for the lowest tech phones to handle. Your users remain happy as they can navigate freely through your website minus the complications from the pages which are developed for the media heavy and larger tech-minded.

Apart from the technical benefits, from a design perspective, a mobile first approach promotes developing for ease of usability. Mobile is a major part of the present and future web, and if your enterprise is not utilizing (or planning to utilize) an active mobile strategy that works, you can expect a swift demise into obscurity.