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As mobile website traffic only continues to grow, companies can no longer procrastinate about having a responsive website.
The “early adopter” stage of responsive website design has long since passed. Internet consumers today have a high expectation that websites will adapt intelligently to their device.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241462/global-mobile-phone-website-traffic-share/
We’ve made great progress, don’t you think? Have you ever considered having a web browser on your television? Maybe even stranger, your refrigerator? (I’m out on that one, by the way.)
Years ago, when I initially started building websites, the world was very different. The phrase “smartphone” was nonexistent. It was so slow, if your dumb phone had any internet at all, that you’d prefer to wait for desktop access.
There was essentially just one primary dimension when web developers designed a website… I don’t really remember aiming for 980 pixels. In order to find the lowest common denominator, you essentially have to ask, “What are the most prevalent monitor dimensions?”
But that was in the past; things are different now.
Here are my top 3 reasons for why EVERY company with a public face should have a responsive website while we’re still talking about it.
It’s incredibly tempting to ignore how users are finding your website. Remember, you’re not even there. You are blind to their difficulties and disappointments. Website problems can easily go unnoticed and unrecognised.
But I can assure you that your brand will suffer if you don’t have a responsive design.
How on earth is it helping you if users have to constantly pinch and zoom while browsing your website? If 90% of the websites that they use look great on their phone, your company will look old school. Don’t let your prospects leave because you keep putting off dealing with this problem.
Did you know that when determining how to rank a website, Google takes into account over 200 factors? Is it surprising that mobile friendliness is so high up there?
Google’s goal with every internet search is to provide the best and most relevant results for the user. But unresponsive content is by nature low quality because the user experience is negative.
Google is working harder and harder to make their search engine unplayable. Google aims to rank content higher because it is actually helpful to actual, living humans, rather than enabling unethical techniques like keyword stuffing and buying backlinks.
The bottom line is to prioritise user experience if you want Google to be satisfied. Making ensuring your company website is responsive is an excellent place to start.
I speak with several marketing directors, especially during the times of year when we conduct a lot of outreach. Making a second, mobile-specific website is one of the common mistakes I see people make when trying to work around a non-responsive website. The separate mobile site is frequently created automatically by those who merely install a WordPress plugin.
Unfortunately, since you are now actually managing two websites, this can frequently lead to maintenance headaches.
There is just one website with a genuinely responsive web design. When a website is created correctly, the information just looks fantastic on all devices and there is no content duplication 95% of the time.
The majority of the time, it is unfortunately not possible to retrofit an outdated website to be responsive; you must instead start from scratch. The simple explanation for this is that we are discussing your website’s basic framework. It would be like requesting steel framing for your house when it was built with wood.
Fortunately, not everything may be lost. It is possible to rebuild your website while preserving the current look if you like it. You might advise your web developer to redesign the website so that it is responsive rather than going through a lengthy design process.
At our firm, we do these responsive rebuilds relatively often. Because there’s not much to think through from a responsive design perspective, these types of projects typically go pretty fast.
Have a question about responsive web development? Ask us a question in our comments section or send us a message on our contact form. We’d love to hear from you.
Tell us about your project concept and we will get back to you within 1 business day.
One Response
Excellent write-up, I have always enjoyed your articles, you’re such a wonderful writer, always on point. This article is loaded to the hilt.