The reputation of a business is adversely affected when their website is not optimised for the latest generation of smartphones or tablet computers. Thanks to responsive web design, however, business owners no longer need to worry about their website’s desktop version looking atrocious on a two-inch smartphone screen. Responsive web design ensures that the size and spacing of your website’s layout, the dimensions of your images, and the features and navigation of your website all scale for an optimal viewing experience across all devices. You can rest assured: your company will reach all of your potential customers’ devices smoothly, without skipping a beat.
why responsive web design is important for your business
1. Improved User Experience
The key to any successful website is user experience. Responsive design automatically optimises the layout of your website to make it easy for your visitor to use it from any device; whether it be desktop, smartphone or tablet, users can easily find the navigation bar, text, images and calls to action that matter to them the most. Furthermore, when it takes minimal effort – as well as a minimum of tedious scrolling and sore thumbs – your visitor will stay on your site longer, interact, and come back more often. This means that your visitor will trust your brand more and ultimately be more likely to convert into customers and even become brand advocates.
2. Increased Mobile Traffic
Over half of all internet traffic comes from mobiles and tablets these days. You will often find an internet user searching for a product or service or information using his or her mobile phone or tablet. If your website is not mobile friendly then you are definitely losing visitors to your competitors sites which are mobile friendly. Responsive design will get you more visitors as it will be easier on mobile devices to see.
3. Better SEO Performance
Other than that, Google and other search engines tend to prioritise mobile-friendly sites for rankings. Especially since Google adopted mobile-first indexing, it makes sense that Google would primarily use the mobile version of your content for rankings. This means better mobile SEO will help you rank higher and ultimately bring more organic traffic and more potential customers to your site through your single URL and single instance of HTML.
4. Faster Loading Times
The longer you wait before your site loads, the higher the bounce rate and the lower the user satisfaction. If your site is designed in a responsive way and thanks to that loads faster on all devices (because it was designed responsive and needs no different pages for different devices), and also along less time (because the design can be scaled to fit the device display on the go), this will also benefit your site SEO ranking. A site that loads under … seconds is far more likely to convert its users.
5. Cost-Effective and Easy to Maintain
Responsive design means you essentially have one website that works on all devices. That one website can present itself optimally for each screen, whether desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. Instead of having to create multiple adaptations of your site for each device, you have only one that can be maintained by fewer designers, developers and content managers. Your brand can remain consistent on all devices. Changes, additions and other updates can be made centrally, and the ongoing maintenance costs of many sites drop dramatically.
6. Higher Conversion Rates
When a site is mobile-friendly, visitors are more likely to remain on it longer, complete important actions (such as filling out forms or making a purchase) and, ideally, subscribe to your newsletter. For instance, a responsive web style makes the experience of reading a news article on an iPad mimic that of reading it on a desktop. The effortless experience creates a direct path to conversion from the desire to learn about something specific to the desire to buy it. The fact that visitors like being on your site and the better user experience will naturally increase your conversion rate, which, in turn, benefits your bottom line.
7. Future-Proofs Your Website
New devices and screen sizes keep getting invented and hitting the market, so by having a responsive web design, you are making a site that can seamlessly change its layout when one of these new devices is released – all you have to do is re-size the media. By using this method, your job now becomes how to handle all of these different screen sizes and device resolutions rather than building a completely new website every time a new device comes on the market. This makes your site truly future-proof – by using a single design, you will save a lot of money on redesign and rebuild time over the many years that come, instead of having to overhaul your site every couple of years. With responsive design, you get the blessing of being able to handle these technological shifts rather than a curse from trying to program it yourself.
8. Improved Brand Perception and Customer Loyalty
By ensuring that your website is responsive, you’re not only providing better functionality but also signalling to a visitor that your brand is committed to providing the best user experience on any device. A visitor who can accomplish tasks and interact with your site in a consistent manner and feel confident that your organisation has taken measures to ensure a better site experience on another device will feel more positively about your brand. All these signals will result in repeat visitors to your site, and they will be more likely to refer it to other people.
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Conclusion
Simply put, responsive web design is no fad. It’s a savvy operational decision. It positions a business to create a positive user experience, gain a leg up on SEO, and increase conversion rates. As the proliferation of mobile and cross-device browsing grows, the businesses that will benefit from meeting users’ needs – and boost their brand reputations – are those that have invested in responsive web design. Your website will function at its very best for every visitor by being responsive.
