Responsive design has many advantages for website owners, including SEO, reaching a larger audience, and staying in sync with the latest trends in web design.
If you are an online business owner or webmaster looking to keep your website and business on top of the competition, expand your reach, increase your conversion rates, and keep your users happy, then getting a responsive website should be your top priority.
What is responsive design?
For those unfamiliar with ‘responsive web design’, the simplest definition is that a responsive website is optimized for viewing (i.e., looks good) on different devices, screens, and resolutions.
In other words, the design adapts to the available viewing space, offering the user a pleasant experience without moving left and right with a scroll bar, zooming in or zooming out to read the text or view an image.
To give you a real example, try to view the article you are reading now on a desktop or laptop, android tablet, iPad, or smartphone. Try to turn the devices to landscape/portrait mode and observe how the design adapts to the screen size and resolution.
What is not a responsive design? A website that looks the same on mobile as it looks on the desktop (but in a smaller size) is not a responsive design. With a responsive design, you can read, navigate, and interact with a website on your chosen device without zooming in or out.
What is the difference between a mobile website and a responsive website?
Many people confuse a mobile-friendly website with a responsive one, but they’re not exactly the same. A mobile-friendly website looks good on mobile devices but may not look as good on bigger resolutions.
In most cases, there is the desktop version of a website, and then there are dedicated pages (usually on an m.subdomain) optimized for mobile, which differ from those shown on the desktop.
While these websites look good on the desktop and mobile, the user experience is less favorable if you view them on other resolutions.
With responsive websites, there is only one set of pages (and one set of code) for a website, and what changes is how those pages adapt to different devices.
The easiest way to tell if a website is responsive is to change your browser width and see how it looks. If the design adapts well and the website still looks good, it is responsive.
Is a responsive website the same as the native apps you can install on your iPhone or Android? a mobile-friendly version is different from native apps that can be installed on Android and iPhones.
Advantages of responsive design for website owners
So now that it is clear what a responsive website is and is not let’s see the advantages of having a responsive website for your business and how to justify the investment needed to turn your non-responsive website into a responsive one.
1. Reach more audience
Many studies show a dramatic rise in the number of people who use their mobiles and tablets for all their online activities (social networking, shopping, researching, searching Google, etc).
- Appearing on smartphones is critical for local businesses. 94% of smartphone users look for local information on their phones, and 84% take action, such as making a purchase or contacting the business.
- 77% of users have researched a product or service on their device, and 46% of smartphone users have purchased their phone
- 67% of people start shopping on one device and continue to another
- 65% of sequential shopping occasions are started on a smartphone
What does this mean for businesses? You may lose visitors or customers if you don’t offer your users or potential customers a good experience on their chosen device. On the other hand, if you ensure that their experience on the various devices is good, you are more likely to retain them as visitors and later convert them into customers.
2. Your customers are already mobile
If you check your analytics, you will most likely find out that 10% —30 % of your visitors are already coming from mobile devices, and if you are not offering them a user-friendly version, you are losing customers.
So, the added advantage of going responsive is that it will enable you to keep in touch with your customers and engage with them on every possible occasion.
3. You have one website to maintain and one set of code
As mentioned above, the beauty of having a responsive website versus a mobile-friendly version is that you only need to maintain one set of code, one set of pages for your website, so any changes or new functionality you offer to the desktop version are automatically available on mobile as well.
4. SEO benefits from responsive design
There has been a long discussion in the SEO industry about responsive websites and SEO. Some people say it’s good for SEO. Others believe that a responsive website is not the best solution for all businesses, while Google says that having a responsive website is the recommended configuration for creating smartphone-optimized websites.
In my opinion, a responsive website is good for SEO because:
- You have content published only once, so there is no risk of getting into duplicate content issues
- Any efforts you put on SEO for your desktop version are ‘automatically’ applicable for mobile as well
- You are offering your mobile users an optimized version, so you are more likely to rank higher on mobile search
- Google recommends it. Although that does not mean they will favor this method, they suggest having a responsive website is the best practice.
5. Increase conversions and earnings from ads
By going from a mobile-friendly version to a responsive website, you are more likely to increase conversions or earnings from ads.
Migrating 3 AdSense websites to responsive design resulted in a 20-30% increase in AdSense earnings compared to mobile-friendly versions.
Details of these case studies will be published in the next few weeks (so stay tuned), but the AdSense increase indicates that responsive websites also increase conversions.
Data from our clients who sell products online support the above statement, and we will also publish more details soon.
6. Stay in front of the competition
It’s becoming an industry standard, so staying in synch means you are closer to your competitors (or ahead if they are not following a responsive design).
7. You are preparing now for the future
The future of the web is mobile, and it is estimated that more than 5 billion people will use mobile phones by 2017. These are numbers and figures you cannot ignore, and if you are not convinced that a responsive website can help your business now, it will certainly do so in the next few years.
8. Offer a consistent design across all devices
A responsive website can help you maintain a consistent design across devices rather than serving your users with different pages for each type of device that may have a distinct look.
How can you make a website responsive?
This article does not cover the technical details of creating a responsive website, but I can give you some guidelines and examples of what we have done for other clients.
Websites can be designed responsive from the beginning or converted into responsive later.
There are 2 ways to make a responsive website:
- Use a responsive theme—If you are using WordPress, several ready-made themes are also responsive, so you can buy one off the shelf and use it.
- Transform your existing website and theme into a responsive design.
- Create a custom design from scratch that is also responsive.
The nice thing about migrating from non-responsive to responsive is that the desktop version stays the same. The look n feel of the desktop website does not change in any way so you don’t have to worry that a responsive design will break your website’s theme.
From our experience, it is possible to make almost any type of website (especially WordPress websites) responsive.
How much does it cost?
If you plan to use a pre-made responsive theme, the price difference compared to non-responsive themes is unimportant.
If you are designing your website from scratch, a responsive design may cost 10% more than a non-responsive website (of course, this depends on the actual design).
If you want to migrate your existing website to a responsive design, the cost may range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on its complexity and setup.
If you want to find out how much it will cost to make your website responsive, contact us and give us more details about your website, and we can send you a quote.
Are there any disadvantages to responsive design?
No technology or design methodology is perfect, and responsive web design is no exception to this rule. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the advantages are far more important than the disadvantages. In my opinion, the most important disadvantages of responsive design are:
It is not suitable for complex websites that use specific mobile functions—for example, if a website uses cameras, GPS, or other mobile functions, a mobile-friendly website may be more appropriate than a responsive website.
If not done correctly, it can slow down a website's mobile version. When making a responsive website, you should always remember that it should load as fast as possible on mobiles and should only show items that the mobile browser can display. If these rules are broken, the results will be the opposite.
Responsive websites do not work on Internet Explorer 8 and below.
Conclusion
A responsive website design is a must for all types of websites. Whether you are selling products online, promoting your services or running ads a responsive design can help you increase your traffic, make more conversion or earn more from your ads. Almost all websites can be made responsive, the cost depends on the complexity of website and platform that it is build.
Contact us today to estimate the cost of making your website responsive and taking advantage of the advantages explained above.
