Why Mobile First and Web APIs matter so much from now on

Statistic provided by Statista

The mobile traffic on the web will increase 8 times by 2020. The fact that more people are accessing information on the web using their mobile devices rather than desktop isn’t exactly news. Right now %15 to %25 of the traffic that we get on our websites is mobile. These type of users demand quick access to the information in small bites, they are also very good when it gets engaging with your brand and paying for your products and services.

This traffic could be via the mobile browsers or mobile apps. It makes sense that whatever service you are offering on the web offer 2 important features: web APIs and MobileFirst responsive user interfaces.

Web APIs

APIs are used by mobile apps to access information from your website so they can search, browse, and read your content. Normally when you access a website you end up downloading a lot of information in every request such as: data, css, javascript, html, images, and graphics. A web API only provides the data in XML and more commonly in JSON formats. The mobile app obtains the data in JSON and renders it nicely using the native user interface elements of the mobile devices whether it is iOS or Android.

Mobile First Websites

This is important particularly when people are accessing your website using the browser on their mobile device. In this case MobileFirst means you design for small screen first and then accommodate devices with larger screens. Our website is responsive; resize your browser to see or access it using your mobile phone. Long gone are the days that we tried to fill up every white space on the websites with widgets, modules, links, and banner ads. Mobile users demand focus and simplicity which means you need to remove content from your pages until you cannot remove. You need to only provide what matters to your users and nothing more.