6 Reasons Why You Need a Responsive Website Designed.

Responsive Website Design. You may have heard the term before, but you might not know what it means. You can find various definitions on the web, but let us simplify it for you. A responsive website is a website that is able to adapt and automatically reformat to fit the size of the screen that is accessing it. Desktop, Widescreen, Laptop, Tablet, iPhone, Phablet — whatever the size, your website has the ability to readjust its layout to fit the screen flush, ultimately enhancing the user experience. Sounds pretty cool, right?

What was once considered a luxury, a responsive website is now absolutely necessary. Remember when you were hesitant about having a website for your business, and now you and all of your competitors have one? Responsive websites are now at that point. The main reason: Mobile searches have exploded, accounting for almost 50% of website traffic today, and that percentage will continue to rise. Here are six reasons why you need a responsive website.

Because Google Said So

Starting April 21st, 2015, Google will begin rewarding responsive websites with higher rankings (and subsequently punish those that are not). Google is constantly in pursuit of providing the perfect online experience for their users, so that’s why they’re giving the nod to websites that are “with the times” and designed for the mobile-era. Google has gone as far as building a tool that can test your current website to see if it’s responsive. We highly recommend you check your website using this tool, which can be done here:https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

Responsive design is going to allow sites to rank higher than non-responsive competitors. Responsive design is preferred for SEO by search engines. This is because having a single URL for a search engine to crawl your site reduces the chance of on-page errors.

Mobile use is on the rise

As mentioned before, mobile website traffic is steadily increasing. According tosmartinsights.com, 80% of internet users own a smartphone. More smartphone users means more smartphone website traffic.

Responsive websites are faster

Google PageSpeed recommends content should load under one second and the entire page should load in two seconds. This is usually not possible when loading a website intended for desktop viewing on a mobile device. Studies show that users who have to wait too long for a site to load will simply leave before the site even loads.

Social Media is mostly done through mobile devices

The majority of traffic on social media comes from mobile app usage. Your friends, family, fans and followers share their favorite websites and stories on social media with a single tap of a button on their smartphone. The last thing you want is for your potential customer to go from a mobile-based app to a desktop version of a website. The experience will be much more seamless if the user goes from a mobile-experience to another mobile-experience.

Responsive websites are easier to update

Responsive websites are both faster and easier to update versus websites that have both a desktop and mobile version. If you have both a desktop and mobile version, chances are, you’ll have to log in to both desktop and mobile content management systems to make changes. With a responsive website, you only have to make your changes once. This will save you time, money and headaches.

An improved user experience

How many times have you viewed a website on your mobile device where you had to constantly tap and pinch just so you could read the text? With a responsive website, that will no longer be an issue. The text will automatically be formatted to the size of your screen, so no matter which device you are viewing it on, your website will maintain a uniform look and be legible. Same goes for the navigation. Your navigation will change when accessed by a mobile device to feature a tap-dropdown menu so you can clearly view all options. No more eye squinting and finger workouts!

These six reasons prove that a responsive website is crucial to your marketing strategy, and will be in play for the years to come. The fact that Google is openly supporting this style of web design is enough evidence to prove its stability. If you would like more information on responsive websites and would like for Bell Media to build one for you, please contact Matt Pavlick, VP of Online Services, at 334-652-4355 or fill out our contact form. Bell Online’s staff of experts can assess your current website situation and educate you on the steps needed to increase your page rankings on Google.