When it comes to websites, no two are the same. In fact, you can usually tell the age of a website based on how it’s designed, how it responds to certain actions and even how it looks. I mean, let’s be honest, who hasn’t gone to a website and immediately clicked away because it looked like it was designed in the 90s? But did you know that you can tell how old a website is by how well it works on a mobile or tablet? Responsive design has been around for quite a while now, but there are still thousands of websites that haven’t updated to include it. So today we’re going to talk about what responsive design is, and why your website needs it.
What Is Responsive Web Design?
Essentially, responsive web design is a way to put a website together so that it automatically scales its content and design to fit the size of the screen it’s being viewed on. It stops the images and text from being too wide for the screen and means that your readers don’t have to do lots of extra work and scrolling to read your content.
The goal of responsive web design is to make your website accessible to anyone, no matter what device they are using. It stops unnecessary resizing, scrolling, zooming or panning that occurs within sites that haven’t been optimised for multiple screen sizes. This might not seem too bad, but having to do this extra work is often frustrating for users and can put customers off using your website.
Do I Really Need It?
Yes. There’s not really a lot of debate to be had on that, especially once you realise that 52% of people will use mobile phones or tablets as their main internet browser. If you don’t update your website to be mobile responsive, you are essentially cutting off over half of your potential customers! We now live in a multi-screen society, which means you need to provide a good experience on your website across as many devices as possible, because you never know what device someone will be viewing your content on.
Another reason responsive web design is essential is the SEO benefits. In 2015 Google announced mobile-friendliness would become a ranking factor in its search engine algorithms, and that ranking factor has been given even higher value over the years. This means that Google prioritises websites that are mobile friendly in search engine results, because they are the ones that provide a good experience for users – which is Google’s job. So websites that are not mobile responsive are also losing the chance to be found by new customers.
The Benefits Of Responsive Websites
On top of the SEO benefits, there are 5 other key benefits to using responsive web design.
Cost effective: In the past the only way to have a mobile friendly website was to essentially build two websites, one for mobile and one for desktop. This was expensive, which is why it wasn’t popular. But now responsive web design allows you to run just one website that can be used on desktop and mobile, making it a more cost-effective solution.
Flexibility: With responsive design you can make changes quickly and easily, without worrying about making changes on two websites. Instead of having to do it twice, you only need to make changes once.
Improved user experience: User experience is one of the most important things in web design. Responsive web design means you can focus on making that user experience as smooth and easy as possible. This gives users a better impression of your business and means they are more likely to come back and buy.
SEO: As we mentioned before there are significant SEO benefits to building a website with responsive design. By making this small change you can appear above your competition that isn’t using responsive design, and help boost your rankings for other things as well.
Easy to manage: No one enjoys unnecessary admin. Responsive web design means you can hire a single designer to manage all of your website. Or if you prefer to do it yourself, this design method means you don’t need to duplicate your work and don’t have to worry about things going wrong.
At Moyralla Marketing we specialise in web design that is optimised for both desktop and mobile use. So you don’t have to worry about user experience or taking hits to your SEO any more. Instead, you can relax knowing your website has been built from the ground up with responsiveness in mind. If you would like to know more, just get in touch with the team today.
