
Having a responsive website design has become more and more necessary in the digital world than ever before. Many people are still on the fence about taking the plunge and redesigning their site so that it can be accessed on different technology platforms. Rather than building separate sites for each device, responsive design uses a single website that intelligently adjusts its layout and features based on how it is being viewed.
For some businesses however this change does not need to be, but how does a person know if it is right for their business? Below are the top 4 reason for someone to build a responsive site.
1. Flexibility
Two interesting things are happening with web browsing. Phones are becoming smaller and more useful for web browsing, and desktops and TV screens are getting larger and it seems to be happening at a rapid pace. With a responsive design this will allow you to easily adapt to changing screen sizes. People are even using TV screens to browse the web and this will help adapt to the ever evolving screen sizes that you see whether it be on a tablet, TV, desktop, or phone.
With responsive design it’s much easier to go in and change what is shown on different screen sizes. Without responsive design, when a new screen size comes out, you have to go and build a new site. That means new design, new production chances are more money as well.
You will know when flexibility is beginning to become important to your business by looking at the amount of traffic you have coming in. When mobile or tablet traffic reaches more than 40% of your site’s traffic, it’s time to flexible.
2. Regularity
With responsive designs the look and feel of your desktop site is the same throughout each platform, particularly your mobile device. That means the header and other content on the sites are the same fonts, the color scheme matches, and all of the other minor details are the exact same throughout, no matter what device your customer decides to use.
3. Search Engine Optimization
Google is obviously a very reliable source and one of the top search engines on the web. Google stated recently, “Google recommends webmasters follow the industry best practice of using responsive web design, namely serving the same HTML for all devices and using only CSS media queries to decide the rendering on each device.” If Google is saying it, then it must be important.
It’s hard to argue with the company that provides most of the search traffic to your site. From this information we can assume that in the future, responsive sites will be easier to optimize for Google. Plus it’s less work than attempting to optimize a desktop site, a mobile site, and a tablet site.
4. Fast Changes
As the internet constantly is undergoing new changes, so should your site. It is important to evolve with the internet and technology and test your website with the different developments in order to make your site the best it can be, regardless of what the goal of your site is. That being said, would you rather have to make those changes once or multiple times? It is much less work to make those changes once and have them reflect on multiple different devices, rather than having to make a the changes separately from your site on a desktop, then update your mobile site, then go back and update your tablet. And let’s not forget about the future, as screen sizes change rapidly, it’s easy to think you could have 3 or 4 different sites out there, or to make it easier you could just have site that responds to all devices.
Considering getting a responsive web design is important and can help your business attract more viewers to your site, even while on the go. Make sure you look at advantages of having a website that can respond across all platforms and understand how effective it just may be.