These days a responsive website is now required as people now use smartphones, tablets, and some other mobile devices of all shapes and sizes to shop and do business. It is a wildly competitive market out there and if your business is still playing catch up with mobile consumer trends, you’re likely losing out on a large market. More than 60% of people use mobile devices to access the internet and 67% of mobile users are more likely to buy a site’s product or service if it has a mobile-friendly site. It is a clear indication that user experience is of the utmost importance in winning more business. A reputable web hosting company with great performance levels, such as in page loading, is also a key factor in ensuring the optimal user experience.
If you have ever tried to browse a site on your phone that isn’t mobile optimized then you are likely to have experienced all sorts of display and navigation problems. And when encountering such issues, the first instinct for most people is to click away from that site. In fact more than 40% of people will choose to navigate away if they land on a non-responsive site. Designing and developing a website so that the content and site structure gives a seamless viewing experience across a number of devices is important in order to keep your site users happy and engaged. This way there will be no missed opportunities, upset customers or lost sales.
What Is A Responsive Website?
A responsive website automatically adapts its text, images, and figures to fit the user device screen, no matter what the size, shape or model. It can be frustrating for users to have to enlarge small text, view multiple rows with columns or scroll horizontally to read a single line. With a responsive site, users can see all the necessary information on one screen with minimal scrolling and zooming.
A web developer will use detailed coding or web templates to transform your website so that it can adjust content for the users’ device screen. Otherwise, your site will show up as on a desktop-sized screen or the layout will get messed up in an effort to fit everything onto the smaller screen.
Responsive design enables proper displays that dynamically scale to be easy-to-read no matter the size or shape of a screen. A responsive website can also integrate mobile-friendly traits, such as user-friendly layouts, quick page navigation, mobile-specific forms for subscriptions, proper spacing between links so that users do not have difficulty clicking the right link, etc.
Importance Of Having A Responsive Website
You may still be wondering, why your business needs to upgrade its website to meet the current mobile-consumer standards. Here we list five most important reasons to go the responsive site way.
Mobile Device Usage Is Increasing
Billions of people worldwide use mobile devices everyday for surfing the web, playing games, checking social media accounts, working, shopping and more. Mobile devices give users immediate access and instant gratification. These devices can easily fit in your pocket, purse and even on your wrist. A responsive designed site is easily and intuitively navigable, no matter what device visitors are on. This results in more satisfied users and consequently leads to increased conversions. Thanks to more customers shopping from their phones and tablets, ecommerce is growing exponentially. Without a responsive site, your business will be missing out on a big source of revenue.
Responsive Design Improves SEO
As of 2015, Google brought in a major update known as Mobilegeddon that began rewarding sites with responsive designs for multi-device support. Google algorithm does take note of your site’s bounce rate and click-back times to either reward or punish you in search engine rankings. Mobile-optimization and a responsive site is a huge factor could greatly improve your SEO ranking. If you don’t have a mobile site Google could penalize your website and you may end up losing out on even more potential customers. Why take that risk?
Dynamic User Experience With Your Brand
Having a responsive and mobile-friendly website ensures that customers don’t leave frustrated because they can’t read or engage with the content on your site. Responsive design gives your customers an all-around better user experience and the ability to move between platforms. You will be serving a vibrant and functional site that serves their best interests, whether on their tablet, their laptop and so on. Satisfied customers are more likely to review and share their positive experience on social media, reaping new visitors to your site. You could see higher customer traffic simply from a responsive and better user experience design (UX).
Responsive Design Increases Conversions
Responsive design creates a single site that gives users a seamless experience and doesn’t require redirection to an alternate URL based on the user’s device. It meets both your mobile and desktop needs, without requiring additional resources. A mobile responsive site also scales to fit any device so users don’t have to scroll or zoom in order to accurately navigate through the site. And research shows that users that have a positive interaction with your mobile site are more likely to convert.
Responsive Site An Asset For Your Business
With so many benefits of having a responsive website, what are you waiting for? If your site is outdate or you need help to create the best UX for your business to improve user engagement or lead conversion, then you can always turn to an outside website design and development provider with adequate experience.