Responsive Website Design
Pretty much everyone owns a mobile or tablet device these days. With the meteoric rise in web browsing using mobiles or tablet devices, it’s now essential that you have a responsive website design that can be viewed correctly on any device.
If your website was designed a few years ago it’s likely that it’s not going to responsive and therefore you could be missing out on a large percentage of potential customers. In some cases, you might have had 2 separate websites, one for desktop and another for mobile. This is not cost effective and can lead to duplicate content.
Google has now started to penalise websites that are not responsive. You could also find yourself losing out against your competitors if your website cannot be accessed by mobile. Web browsing by mobile has now overtaken desktop browsing worldwide.
Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead.
I’m going to explain some of the top reasons for having a responsive website design.
Customer Experience
This is without doubt to best reason to have a responsive web design. You might have previously visited a website on your mobile and not had a great experience due to the fact images didn’t display correctly or text wasn’t clear. Sure, your website looks great on a desktop however, if it looks bad on a mobile you are potentially losing customers.
You want to be providing a seamless customer experience and a responsive website will help.
Google Prefers Responsive Websites
Google wants users to have a good experience after leaving their search engine and this means responsive websites will rank higher in search results. Google see responsive web design as the best browsing experience for users, so it makes sense for them to prefer website designs that can adapt seamlessly to mobiles or tablets.
Check out Google’s handy guide to Mobile Friendly Websites
More Traffic
If you have a responsive website design you are going to see more traffic than a website that had only been optimised for a traditional desktop. As a business you should not be excluding mobile customers from being able to access your website and services, these customers will most likely visit your competition.
By ensuring your website adapts seamlessly to mobile you can maximise your coverage, which will lead to more website traffic and customers.
