Mobile First Design vs Desktop Design

Mobile design has been a hotly debated subject for the last couple years, and finally, I feel as though we have come to a point where making our desktop sites more mobile friendly isn't the daunting and confusing task it once was. In fact, most sites that I personally end up on have some sort of mobile optimization. Be it the removal of processor-heavy objects or the reorganization of content to accommodate for the smaller screen real-estate. We have come to the point where redesigning your site for mobile is kind of a piece of cake. Just make your site as you always have, then use CSS media queries to remove the features that would bother mobile users. Right?

However, I was shocked to find a study by PhoCusWright Inc., which investigated the statistics of how users react to slow loading times on mobile adapted sites. All of that content which is loaded for desktop versions of your site, and then hidden away on mobile versions may slow your site's loading time down to the point where your users will go elsewhere. A quote from Akamai.com stated:

• Three second rule - 57 percent of online shoppers will wait three seconds or less before abandoning the site
• Younger travelers are less patient – Generation Y and younger travelers are less patient than older travelers when it comes to page load times. 65 percent of 18-24 year olds expect a site to load in two seconds or less
• Prevention is key - A third of travelers would be less likely to visit a site after experiencing technical problems like slowness or errors on the page. Business travelers are slightly more likely to have a negative reaction
• Loyalty is not forgiveness - Active loyalty program members are more likely than other travelers to indicate that they would not likely be influenced at all by technical glitches at 34 percent. However, the remaining 66 percent are actually more likely than others to have strong negative reactions.
• Travelers tend to be multi-taskers - 59 percent of consumers do something else when waiting for a travel website to load. Nearly one in five (19 percent) open another travel site in a new window when made to wait.
• Hidden fees may cost you - 43 percent of online shoppers have abandoned a booking because the final product price and/or fees were higher than they were willing to pay

Some of these findings should not be very surprising, but the exact statistics are a little bit staggering. If you site is loading videos and flash animations and jQuery galleries, loads of text, and CSS effects, then hiding them on mobile platforms, your users could be leaving faster than they came.

So many people access the web from their mobile devices these days. In fact, the Pew Research Internet Project web site has published that 63% of adults who own cell phones use those cell phones to access the web. Presumably on a semi-regular basis.

This information may be a bit sobering for some. I know it certainly is for me. For me, these statistics are enough to start really getting hard-nosed about mobile-first development. Making sure that the site works completely without flashy effects and the like is already a best-practice standard which I adhere to as best I can, so mobile first development should not be too much of a change in the work-flow.

What do you all think about mobile-first development? Are these statistics enough to sway you in your work-flow, or do you think that if someone wants a real web experience, they should just go on a desktop PC? What are your thoughts about sites linking to a mobile version of the site, instead of using media queries? Do the excess HTTP requests justify the better adaptation of your site for your mobile users?