4 Reasons Why You Need a Responsive Website
By Anthony Indraus June 12, 2016
Now you are relaxed, your website has been delivered; it’s now live for the whole world to see and your customers are ready to purchase your awesome products and read your fantastic blogs, then you hear a faded voice in the background uttering the words “is it a responsive website?”, an unsettling feeling emerges and the great question looms around, you start wondering what is that ‘responsive’ you are speaking of?!
Ok, maybe the scenario is not as dramatic but what is a responsive website, isn’t it the same thing as a mobile website?
The difference between mobile and responsive design and why a responsive website.
While the purpose of both methods of mobile and responsive design is to fit a website on a mobile screen (or different devices) and making it easy for users to browse and navigate your website (UX — User Experience), there is a fundamental difference.
Mobile Design is developing two different sets of websites, one for your desktop viewers and one for your mobile viewers, while this method served well it required a lot more hours of development as both websites did not share any code, and required further coding to identify the browser type in order to send you to the suitable URL (www.example.com for Desktop and m.example.com for mobile).
And it came with a lot of drawbacks including technical limitations and is costly in the long run, as it required hosting two websites and updating content on two different places rather than just the one.
Responsive Design was the answer to every web developer’s prayer, the term was coined by Ethan Marcotte and meant fluid design, a single website the reacts and re-adjusts based on the device it is being viewed on; using Media Queries. Which meant a unified look for your website on every device and updating content on one means updated on all.
Mobile Browsing is The Future and The Future is NOW
1.2 Billion People are accessing websites on their mobile device, that is an incredible 80% of all internet users. We now live in a multi-screen era, and on-the-go browsing, if your website does not look attractive or works on mobile you can safely assume that you are losing around 21% of your traffic and the number is growing.
Search Engines like Responsive
Google’s latest algorithm update imposed how important having a mobile-friendly / responsive website is, even imposing penalties for the websites that are not. You can call it the “mobile-gaddon” if you like. The penalty means your website won’t be ranked high, therefore, your organic traffic will plummet (sad face).
Show me The Money!
Not only a responsive design will help you rank higher on search engines and give your branding a boost like no other, it will also save you heaps of money in the long run, as mentioned earlier you will have one website, which means less maintenance time and if you are a tech-y and like fiddling with code it will be easy for you to update the website yourself and save!
Better User Experience
Users browsing a website from a mobile device show a different pattern of browsing, willing to digest a high amount of content and media with a high possibility of sharing the content on social media networks.
While there is definitely more than 4 reasons why your website should be responsive, the ones mentioned above should be efficient in convincing you to make the jump, google is full with case studies on what a difference mobile responsiveness has offered different businesses. It is time for your business to shine!
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