The number of people browsing the internet on their mobile devices is increasing yearly.
With about 60% of organic search engine visits coming from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, it’s more important than ever that your website is set up to provide a great mobile experience.
And with more and more people using their smartphones and tablets for tasks that were once only possible on desktops, business owners need to create a website that works across platforms and meets the needs and demands of their clients.
Otherwise, they will lose customers to competitors who have adapted to this large group of web searchers. The easiest yet most complex way to meet this requirement is to design a responsive, mobile-friendly website that works flawlessly on all devices.
Below we’ll discuss the importance of responsive designs and their most significant advantages.
What’s A Responsive Website?
Before today’s modern responsive designs, creating a mobile-friendly website required designing a separate website for each device. This was tedious and inefficient. With modern responsive design, on the other hand, you only need to create a single website that works flawlessly on all devices.
Responsive websites have a flexible web design layout that adapts to the screen size. This design ensures that all images, content, and structures look the same regardless of your device.
When the website you’re visiting is built with responsive design, it works seamlessly on desktop screens, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. This will give you the versatility you need to provide an excellent user experience to all your website visitors.
Some of the essential elements considered in responsive design are:
- Pages that can be displayed without the user having to scroll horizontally
- Readable content without the user having to zoom in
- Sufficient space for typing
Importance of Having A Responsive Business Website
A large percentage of website owners still have unanswered questions:
- Why do I need responsive web design?
- How can it help my business?
- What are the consequences of not having a responsive website?
Your website should be able to adapt to different devices and screen sizes. And you never know what device a user will use. Since 2015, Google has prioritised mobile-friendly websites in its search algorithms. Websites that aren’t mobile-friendly automatically fall behind in search engine results because they can’t provide a good user experience.
Imagine you’ve invested a lot of time and effort in creating a great website. But what if no one finds it? Then it’s useless. That’s why creating a responsive website is vital to achieving the best search engine rankings.
Essential Benefits of Responsive Business Website
The main goal of creating a mobile-friendly website with responsive design is to provide your users with the best possible experience. However, you can achieve many other significant benefits with a responsive website. Let’s take a look at them!
#1 Seamless User-Experience
If a user visits your mobile site and isn’t satisfied or doesn’t immediately see the content they’re looking for; there’s a good chance they’ll leave and move on to another site.
Responsive design provides a better experience for users. For example, users don’t have to waste time zooming in and out of text or images on the screen. Instead, all content automatically adapts to the device’s screen.
#2 Effective Brand Messaging
Your website should be able to communicate your brand message to your audience. Many design elements such as colours, fonts, images, and logos used on your website help promote your brand and tell your story.
Responsive web design ensures that all these elements display consistently across all devices and platforms used to access your website. This increases your brand recognition and ensures that all visitors to your website receive the same messages.
#3 Lower Website Maintenance Costs
A key advantage of responsive design is that it takes less time than creating a different standalone mobile website. Reviewing multiple website versions with duplicate content increases development, support, and maintenance costs.
It’s usually much easier for companies to manage and maintain a single website with much less content. In addition, a single admin interface can be easily optimised by using layout and workflow tools to manage cost-effective strategies.
Websites designed exclusively for mobile devices typically lack the advanced navigation techniques of traditional desktop websites. In addition, users must set up and maintain two separate web addresses for their site.
Aside from the cost, responsive design can also reduce the time it takes to maintain your website. After all, it’s more time-consuming to keep multiple versions of your website than a single one. However, you are forced to duplicate your SEO efforts for each website version without responsive website elements.
You should also purchase a separate domain for each site and design each version individually to ensure it’s compatible with your device. With responsive design, you’ll be able to eliminate all these problems quickly and efficiently, saving time and money.
#4 Improved SEO Results
From an SEO perspective, one of the biggest challenges with a separate mobile site is that you have to build your site’s authority from scratch. Also, most separate mobile websites do not rank well in search engines because search algorithms focus primarily on desktop properties.
By redesigning a responsive business website, you can keep all the backlinks and focus on your SEO. This means that your links will be directed to a single domain. This will boost your responsive website in desktop and mobile SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
Developing a single website that adapts to multiple devices can help improve your website’s search engine results – locally and globally. Instead of optimising content or building links for numerous websites, you only need to build a single responsive platform. Plus, the URL stays the same on all devices, which improves your ranking and your website’s visibility in search engines.
Improved Local Search Rankings: Online searches mainly aim to find local businesses that offer a particular service or product. People use their mobile devices for such local searches. Responsive design allows for better compatibility with mobile devices, which often leads to better placement in local search results and makes it easier for users to find your business.
#5 Lower Bounce Rate
Mobile versions of websites can suffer from a high bounce rate if the content offered is reduced or too different from the source content displayed on the desktop version. Google may interpret such a high bounce rate as indicating that your website isn’t providing users with relevant content, which will likely lead to a drop in ranking.
A responsive website helps you avoid this problem by displaying similar (and less curated) content as on the desktop site – in a much more practical way.
Less Content Curation: Content is critical for search engine optimisation (SEO). Regularly published and updated good-quality content will improve your search engine ranking results. Therefore, another advantage of responsive design is that fewer resources are wasted on duplicating content on different websites.
#6 Consolidate Analytics & Reports
A single responsive business website means you no longer need to track conversion paths, user journeys, funnels, and redirects between different versions of your websites. Analytics tools like Clicky and Google Analytics are optimised for multiple devices and responsive reports. All your analytics and tracking still work and are combined into a single report for easy monitoring and analysis.
#7 Increase Conversion Rates & Sales
In addition to the search benefits a responsive business website can provide, it can also increase coveted conversion rates among all mobile users worldwide. Why?
If a potential customer visits your website and encounters a problem on their preferred device, you will likely lose that potential visitor. However, if potential customers can easily access your website from any device, they are unlikely to switch to a competitor. Improving usability will increase conversion rates and, ultimately, sales.
#8 Better Website Performance
A responsive business website allows you to reduce the loading time of your pages. This provides a better user experience and improves your SEO results – page loading speed is also a part of Google’s algorithms.
In addition, the improved performance of your website helps to reduce the bounce rate. Non-responsive websites make it difficult for users to view and engage with your content. The following examples illustrate these non-responsive features:
- Text is harder to read
- Navigation menus are harder to reach
- Buttons don’t always work properly
- Images may not be formatted correctly to fit the screen size
If your site is not responsive enough, visitors will leave your site in favour of a competitor’s website that offers a better experience.
#9 Future of Your Website
Technology constantly evolves, so it’s difficult to predict the next notable development. Have you heard of smart glasses and watches? Would you like your website to be compatible with these modern technologies as well?
One of the advantages of responsive business website design is that they adapt to different screen sizes. Even if your website is viewed from smart glasses and watches in the future, it’ll still be optimised and compatible! A responsive website design is a wise investment if you’re looking for a way to future-proof your website and save money in the long run.
#10 Improved ROI on Social Media Marketing
The majority of social media usage is through mobile devices. If your social media ad campaign links to your website, most users who click on those links will be using mobile devices.
If you want to get the most out of your social media campaigns, your website must provide a great mobile experience. With a responsive business website, you can ensure that visitors who access your website through social media platforms get the best impression of you.
Bottom Line
You’ll always be one step ahead of the competition with a responsive business website. As demand for media-rich mobile devices increases, businesses need to consider several vital aspects. Visibility in search engines, development and maintenance costs, and better conversion rates are among the most critical factors in providing visitors with an optimal user experience.
At Broadweb, we offer comprehensive custom website development services to ensure your new website is built correctly and brings you success for years to come. Our team ensures higher visitor engagement by incorporating the latest and most advanced website features.
If you have questions about responsive web design, please get in touch with our team of experts.
