The Internet as we know it has changed significantly in last one year because of the mobile adoption. Everyone was expecting this change since last 5 years, but web industry was not ready for this kind of berserk growth of mobile adoption.

According to me, here are some of the big changes in the internet that shaped the consumer’s behavior:

• Release of Mosaic browser
• Usage of Images in browser
• When Netspace released
• Microsoft shipped InternetExplorer for free with Operating system.
• AOL’s mission of getting America Online
• Google entered the market
• 3rd world countries started adopting the Internet.
• Web 2.0 Age, Online Gaming started to pick up.
• Gmail was unveiled.
• Social Network Age: Myspace was on the top of its game
• Open source projects started picking up, especially WordPress.
• Apple launched iPhone
• Google releases Chrome browser
• Youtube Started becoming the replacement of TV worldwide
• The Social Network wave part 2: Rise of Facebook, Twitter & Instagram
• Latest Change: Mobile usage Overtakes Desktop traffic

There!….the last point, did you noticed?

The mini computer that you have in your hand has officially taken over the computer that is sitting on the table.

There have been many studies to understand the reason behind this change, but it is actually not that hard to understand. The reason why mobile is taking over the internet is because of “Access“. You might ask, “Access to what Ahmed?”.

Well, to that, I would say:

• Access to answers on a click of the button
• Access to knowledge for curious minds
• Access to Education
• Access to Entertainment
• Access to Managing Business
• Access to Life! for God’s sake.

ALL of that into a palm of a hand? and you’re thinking that it won’t take over the box called CPU? Well, it just did.

The internet has taken over the Desktop traffic and it is now the primary device for the internet in the world.

Credit to Statcounter for the Mobile vs Desktop 2017 data.

Some people are happy about this change and some aren’t, yes, believe me, there are people who are not happy with this market shift because their business was dependent on the desktop usage.

As usual, the one who doesn’t adapt to the change will vanish with time. and YOU as a webmaster needs to adapt to this change as fast as possible.

3 Key areas where you should be focusing in 2017 and beyond:

1. Speed / Performance
2. User Experience
3. Quality of Content

You might say “Ahmed, but weren’t these also important before mobile took over the world?”

Yes! These three points have been an important part for centuries, but I have seen the “Careless” attitude of webmasters on these three areas and now is the time for them to change their habits.

Speed & Performance Matters

Here’s a feedback that I got from one of my non-techie friends. Just understand the user-experience behind his phrase that he said to me:

….while browsing on mobile, if a website take 1 or 2 seconds to load, then I just hit ‘Back’ button and try another search result

If you are living on the internet for a long time like me, then your eyeballs are probably out right now.

For the normal people, let me explain what this means: “People want things faster”.

A couple of decades ago, It was impossible for a mobile to do the amount of computing that it does today. So user’s expectation has gone up, and especially with the Apps, they expect the search results to open instantly.

Who knows this user behavior better than Google, with the amount of user behavior data that they have, it would be ridiculous of them to not act on this. Google has taken many initiatives and projects to speed up the things, one such project is Google AMP.

Don’t just comment below this post saying, I have MaxCDN so I don’t have to worry about the speed, that’s not how you win in the industry. You need to make sure that your website performs well on all industry standard performance benchmark tools.

2. User Experience

User experience, as of 2017 is most important than ever because the websites as we know were designed and built primarily for the desktop and then we tried to adjust that layout to fit the mobile screen size. But this approach is not going to work in the Mobile first world.

Every 3rd party creative vendors like your WordPress theme provider, plugins developer, newsletter subscription, social sharing and other companies like that, they all need to re-think about their solutions for the mobile-first world but they won’t unless and until you start thinking mobile first and demand them the solutions as a part of your mobile website design strategy.

 3. Quality of Content & Product

As much cliche as it sounds, don’t take this headline lightly. Once you actually understand the importance of quality of the product that you produce, then you will no longer be the same person.

The content was as important as it was 40 years ago in the print age, people do understand that. BUT, It’s just the word ‘Quality’ where people gets it wrong.

Because the ‘Quality’ is subjective. My definition of quality would be different from the joe who is working at KFC or from you.

The reason why our definitions are so different is because we have had different experiences in our professional and business lives. And it also depends upon our attitude towards life.

The challenges in your and my businesses would be very identical from a general perspective but what we will learn out of it would be totally different.

I have learned the importance of ‘Planning’ after a recent challenge that I had faced in the business. I think we can achieve anything, but not without proper planning.

There is a famous quote

“Vision without execution is hallucination”. from Thomas Edison

I really believed on this and started executing on my idea, there was only one problem. I didn’t understand it correctly.

The most important part of the execution is planning, and I learned that after the failure of the idea that was very dear to me. I did execute on it, got it out in the market and successfully got the customers, but I didn’t plan my moves.

That’s when I realized that planning is not a different word, it was the part of the word ‘execution’.

So, Living by the quotes is not good, you need to experience. The only way to get that is by facing more and more challenges and failing at them.

but don’t listen to me yapping about the content, see what Neil Patel has to say about this:

Remember that 69% of digital marketing spending is going to content creation – because quality content is what prospects and customers want.

I will recommend you to read his post where he explains the importance of quality in this context.

Conclusion

The world is going mobile, whether you like it on not. Google has jumped on this train and everyone else has, so don’t just wait on the station because the train has already arrived, you better jump on it before it leaves to the destination 2020.