Here are some quick facts you should know about before getting started on this blog!
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We all know that mobile phones and tablets have changed the game when it comes to how people are searching for products and services. We have one client that was convinced that they were seeing the majority of traffic from desktop computers, yet after looking at their analytics data we concluded that over 70% of their traffic was coming from mobile devices.
We all know that mobile is booming, but just how big it’s getting is astounding. Mobile now accounts for more than half of total internet traffic and because of this boom in mobile viewing Google announced Mobilegeddon and started to boost the ratings of sites that are mobile friendly. It’s no longer just nice to have an RWD site, it’s necessary to show up in search results.
What is a responsive website?
RWD is an approach to web design that puts the consumer of the site in the center of the design process. RWD sites are designed to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience.
The site is easy to read and navigate through with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling, making sure this is designed to function across multiple devices from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones.
If your site is RWD it is designed to seamlessly adapt to the layout of the viewing environment by using, proportion-based grids, flexible images, and CSS3 Media queries.
If you’re not convinced yet here are 5 reasons to move to an RWD website… pronto. When we mean responsive, we mean being functional across all devices, that includes: desktop computers, laptops, MacBooks, tablets, iPhones and Android phones.
1. Mobile is Boomin’
As mentioned above mobile viewing accounts for 50% of internet traffic. But the statistics are staggering and point to the direction that the internet is going, mobile, easy to use, and informative. When we really dive into the numbers it’s pretty amazing to see the shift to mobile viewing.
Not only is mobile boomin’ right now, but Google is shifting all of its algorithms towards mobile first. Google recently completely changed the way their “spiders” crawl your website. They know index your mobile website first, then desktop, a huge change in the SEO and website world. This means if your website is not mobile, you’re losing a ton of potential customers.
2. Responsive design is preferred for SEO
Having two site URLs is a big no no. Google prefers responsive web design over mobile templates. Having a single URL is easier for Google bot to crawl your site looking for relevant keywords, and a good user experience. Having one URL also reduces the chance of on-page SEO errors, it’s easier to maintain than a separate, mobile-template site.
3. Responsive sites adapt to future devices.
The reason that responsive design works so well is that the size of the template is designed based on screen size, not device. This ensures that no matter the size of the device it will always fit perfectly.
As the user navigates your site between all their devices, tablet, phone, laptop and TV your site looks great on all of them. What’s important is that as devices continue to evolve and change your site will transition seamlessly forever.See below for a simple graphic. Do you see how the menu changes from laptop to a phone?
4. Give your users a great experience
We all know that content is king, but what good is content when the platform you’re delivering the content on doesn’t offer the user a great experience? It is for this reason that having a responsive website is so important, it ensures that no matter where your potential sale is viewing your content they have a seamless experience and enjoy it without having to zoom in on their phone.
5. Social brings mobile visitors
A study by comScore cites that 55% of social media consumption happens on a mobile device. That means that when you’re posting content to facebook, twitter, Pinterest and other social media sites, 55% of the viewers of that content will be looking at it on a mobile device. As mentioned above it’s imperative to bring these visitors to a responsive site or else you will experience high bounce rates, frustrated potential clients, and low conversion rates. The point is to educate and make money, not push people away!
