It’s becoming a mobile-first world

In the last day, I’ve gotten two notes from start-ups that began on the web but have seen their businesses transformed by mobile, as users increasingly shift their consumption to mobile apps and browsers.

This might seem obvious in a world in which services like Twitter and Pandora now get most of their traffic from mobile. But it bears highlighting because the trend is happening across all sorts of apps and websites and that has implications for developers, publishers and businesses, who must now consider what a mobile-first world looks like. There is still an obvious need for a traditional website but the shifting habits of consumption mean you can’t make mobile an afterthought. People notice if you’re not optimizing for mobile and ignoring mobile users and their experiences can cost publishers. Google quoted a study last year that found that 61 percent of mobile users won’t return to a site if they have trouble accessing it from their phone.