At present, tablets and smartphones, are taking possession of web surfing. In early 2014, Internet usage on mobile devices officially topped PC traffic. That is the reason, why it is vital to have a multiple device-compatible & mobile-friendly website to put up this new digital landscape. To meet this demand, responsive design has promptly become the new standard in web design and development.
Much More Than a Mobile Site
Responsive design is a tactic to web development by making use of fluid, flexible images, CSS3 media queries and proportion-based grids to deliver an enhanced user experience om all devices. Responsive design has considerably more benefits for most businesses than merely having an individual mobile site. The design facilitates your complete website to fully adjust to all devices, bringing a single set of content and code that effortlessly caters to target screen resolutions and sizes. And unlike a mobile site, a responsive site provides the full, information-rich web experience to today’s customers expect from a business.
Viewers Expect More
Few years back, it was acceptable to have only the simple fundamentals of information on your mobile website. Nowadays, 85% web users consider a company’s mobile website should be just as good as or superior to their desktop website. This means that your visitors want the full experience of your desktop site on their mobile device. This comprises simple navigation, access to tools, such as the shopping cart and search bar, and the capability to accomplish the anticipated action for each page, like submitting or purchasing a form. As many visitors are going to view your same website on multiple platforms – perhaps first on their desktop at work, then on their phone at lunch time, then on their tablet at home – it will be unsatisfying if your website looks and responds in a different way each time. A responsive web design makes it cool for clienteles to discover, comprehend, & share your content, which makes for an improved brand impression and general user experience.
Reduction In Bounce Rate And Loading Time
If your website is not working appropriately on mobile phones and visitors exits your page after some clicks, your bounce rate will be higher. When Google notices a high bounce rate, it will provide your website a low quality score and thus rank your site lower, which will eventually decline your website traffic. A responsive design aids to lessen bounce rate because the view of your site is consistent and adapted with every device. Also, a responsive design does not utilize queries to readdress users to another URL like a mobile-site does, so this decreases the load time of a page which can also upsurge your site’s search ranking.
Google Says So
In recent times, Google has made a couple changes in terms of choosing mobile-friendly sites overall. Last November, Google combined mobile-friendly labels as part of search result reports in an effort to connect to seekers on a mobile device the sites that are mobile-friendly. Also, starting April 21, 2015, Google declared via their Webmaster platform that they will make use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal and boost rankings for mobile-friendly sites. It is right that both responsive sites & mobile-sites will pass these tests. Though, Google openly applauds using responsive web design against a mobile-site. Definitely, Google recommends that “webmasters follow the industry best practice of using web design, specifically serving the same HTML for all devices, by means of media queries to decide rendering on each device.” This statement is key for marketers. As the mainstay of responsive design, media queries facilitate websites to adjust to any screen size.
It is pretty noticeable why Google thought responsive design must be “industry best practice.” When Google ranks websites, one of the factors beheld is site traffic, since more traffic equals more integrity. With a separate site for desktop and mobile, traffic is split between different sites, & integrity is thereby divided. As an outcome, Google ideally won’t rank your site as high since it is looking at 2 sites instead of 1. Moreover, having one core domain means one set of files and pages, which makes it simpler for Google and other search engines to crawl and index your content. This additional advantage of responsive design is superior for organic search rankings too, making responsive design ideal for SEO.
Easier Tracking
Having more than a few versions of your website makes it tough for marketers to assess your site’s statistics and make refined, accurate business decisions. However, having a single, responsive website gives you option to track traffic and visitors based on clicks received without having the data separated among a number of website versions. This will provide you a true picture of amount of visits, goal conversions, source of visits & more.
Cost Effective & Efficient
If you to build or redesign your website, you might have observed building a fully-responsive site may cost more investment than building a desktop-site or a separate mobile site. However, a responsive website will save you money in long run. As building a responsive site includes separate design templates for each browser or device size, there is one set of content & one single set of files. This means that forthcoming content updates can be done in 1 place, eliminating version control issues & cutting down maintenance time.
Future Flexibility
Talking about resourcing moola, responsive web design also have a progressive approach that is robust to adjust to upcoming devices, which is a snag of a mobile-site. With a responsive site, when new devices are repeatedly launched, your site will be as future-proof as it can be.
CMS Compatible
If you are assessing which content management system (CMS) to utilize for your website project, be sure to check whether it supports responsive design. Many of the topmost CMS platforms, which include Kentico, Sitefinity, Sitecore and others have in- built features to support responsiveness. This will enable for cost-effectual responsive site development but also allow future template development & site changes to work flawlessly across devices.
Responsive Web Design– The New Must-Have
With growing use of tablets & smartphone, a business is likely to have a site that is not only mobile-friendly but user friendly and consistent across all devices. Having a responsive website will help deliver a better support search engine optimization goals, user experience, save your business money and time long-term, and will provide your website a viable advantage over businesses that have not yet participated in this technology.
