In today’s digital age, If you want to make sure your business succeeds, you have to make sure that you have an effective online presence.
There are lots of ways to engage customers online – including social media and e-mail marketing campaigns – but one of the most important and effective ways to maximize your online business is through a well-designed website – and, more specifically – one using responsive Web design.
A website designed responsively is able to detect what screen size is being used to view your site and adjust itself accordingly so the user has an optimal experience. User experience is the main, and perhaps most obvious, reason behind responsive design.
A responsive site functions at its best possible level, no matter what device the user is viewing it on, and it guarantees the smoothest, most cohesive experience for a user. This encourages people to have a pleasant experience while checking out your service or product – leading to a greater chance at conversion.
UX and “wow” factor aside, there are some great behind-the-scenes reasons to implement responsive design on your website. Need more proof? Keep reading.
Reasons You Should Use Responsive Web Design
1. SEO
One of the best ways to attract new customers online is by appearing in search engine results – and to make sure you do that, you need to make sure you have a high SEO ranking. SEO rankings control how high you show up in search engine results, and they are essentially a measure of a website’s popularity and quality.
One factor that influences your SEO is by the number of clicks it gets, and if you have to design multiple versions of your website – for mobile and non-mobile devices – then your clicks will be split across multiple links. Also, responsive design helps boost SEO because your content isn’t duplicated across multiple sites on the web – which is another factor that can decrease your SEO ranking. If you have a high SEO ranking, you will show up high in search engine results, increasing the chances that you attract new customers online.
2. Time & Money
If you don’t design responsively, you’ll have to design multiple versions of your website, so that it works for customers trying to use your site across a huge range of devices: desktop, tablet and mobile. Developing multiple sites requires multiple updates every time you update your site, which means your developer will have to take more time and energy updating your site.
With a responsive site, you only have to make one update, and all versions of your site will appear with that update. Paying a developer to update multiple versions of a site inherently takes more time and in turn will cost you more money in the long run. A responsive design is more cost-effective and, calculating cost over time, a responsive site is much more financially and resource-efficient.
3. Tracking
If you have multiple versions of your website for mobile and non-mobile devices, it is hard to track the number and type of visitors you are getting accurately. Keeping track of site statistics is important for an online company in order to tailor your business to the people who are actually interested in it – because they are often not the people you were originally targeting or expected to attract. Am I right?
Site statistics can both allow you to see where people are using your site and at what time, which will allow you hone it to suit who is actually using it – and convert potential customers to paying customers. Having a responsive site makes tracking easy, since your traffic will be coming through one site version and not split across multiple – so you won’t have to do the work required to piece together statistics from different sites.
A Necessity, Not a Trend
Responsive design is the forerunner in web design strategies today – and if you want your business to succeed online, it’s important to realize that responsive Web design is more than just a bandwagon. You’ll save yourself time, money, and headaches by choosing to have your site designed and coded responsively. There are multiple approaches – you can do this with or without a framework. Just ask us for more info!