Responsive Web Design has dominated websites for the past few years, transforming the way businesses build their online presence. People nowadays are talking about responsive web designs for websites. Creating a separate version for every screen size becomes difficult and is not feasible.

Responsive Web Design was introduced back in 2010 and recommended from 2015 onwards, but there have been many other updates to web design since that are also of great importance.

But what is a responsive website design and Why is it important for your business?

What is a Responsive Website Design?

Essentially, responsive design is a way to put together a website so that it automatically scales its content and elements to match the screen size on which it is viewed. It keeps images from being larger than the screen width and prevents visitors on mobile devices from needing to do extra work to read your content.

The ultimate goal of responsive design is to avoid unnecessary resizing, scrolling, zooming, or panning that occurs with sites that have not been optimized for different devices. It is often very difficult to navigate these sites, and it may even cost you potential customers who become frustrated with trying to figure out how to do something.

Responsive website design also replaces the previous need to design a dedicated mobile website for smartphone users. Now, instead of designing multiple websites for different screen sizes, you can design just one website that scales up or down automatically to match the device it’s being viewed on.

Why should you invest in responsive design?

We live in a multi-screen society. Because of this, it’s important for your site to be viewable across as many devices as possible because you never know what device someone will be using to view your website.

Responsive website stats suggest that it’s wise to appeal to both desktop and mobile viewers. The number of mobile viewers now outnumbers desktop, and this number will only continue to rise as global smartphone accessibility increases.

Additionally, in early 2015, Google announced that mobile-friendliness would become a ranking factor in its search engine algorithms. This meant that sites that were mobile-friendly would potentially lose some ground in search engine results because they wouldn’t be delivering a good experience to mobile searchers and viewers.

It is hugely important to invest in responsive web design ; your business needs a website that works well on a smartphone or other mobile device screens, due to the sheer amount of people who could be using your website through a smartphone or tablet.

Benefits of Choosing Responsive Design for your Website

1. Cost-effectiveness

Maintaining separate sites for your mobile and non-mobile audiences can get expensive. By using responsive design, you can save money by eliminating the cost of paying for a mobile site. You will only need to invest in a single site design to appeal to all visitors and all devices.

2. Flexibility

When you have a website with a responsive design, you can make changes quickly and easily. You do not need to worry about making changes on two websites. This flexibility is a huge advantage when you just want to make a quick design tweak or fix a typo on your site—you only have to do it once.

3. Increase in Mobile Traffic

As per a survey in 2017, more than half of the global web traffic originates from mobile devices. This goes to show that you cannot forego a responsive web design. More visitors come from mobile devices and spend more time on your site, than on the desktop.

4. Improved user experience

User experience is crucial to website owners. You want people to like your site, and you want it to be easy to use to convince them to come back. If someone visits your website on a mobile device, and it takes forever to load or your pictures do not have the proper resolution, it can make your company appear unprofessional.

No one wants to do business with a place that is unprofessional. But responsive design, which offers a much better user experience, can help convince people to give your company a chance. Because zooming and scrolling will be eliminated, content can be viewed quicker, and the overall impression that visitors have will be much more positive.

5. Search engine optimization gains

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a strategy used by many companies to help boost themselves in Google’s search page rankings. The closer you are to the top, the better the chance potential customers will find you.

Responsive design can help with SEO because Google, as mentioned, gives preference to websites that are mobile-friendly. In combination with other SEO factors, responsiveness can help give you a big boost in search engine results.

6. Ease of management

Most businesses, especially smaller ones, don’t have a lot of time to update or refresh the way their website looks. But rather than having to hire a designer to handle every aspect of your website, responsive design allows you to make the changes yourself, quickly and easily.

Additionally, with just one website, other elements of your marketing will be much easier to manage. You’ll never have to wonder if you should link the mobile or desktop site on a social media update, or question whether or not all of your redirect links will be working to get the right visitors to the right site. Responsiveness takes much of the stress out of managing a business website.

7. Better Loading Time for websites

Responsive websites with responsive images and fluid grids take less time to load, which has a direct impact on the time your user will stay on the website. This has a result in improving the conversion rates for your website.

8.Lower Bounce Rates

A responsive website means that the visitors will stay on your site longer, which reduces your bounce rate. Visitors are more likely to click through and read other pages on your website and explore everything you have got to offer.

9. More Social Sharing

Another benefit of a responsive web design is that it can lead to an increase in the social shares of your content. Responsive social media buttons make it easy to share the links to your website pages. This in turn helps increase the credibility of your website and exposes your content to a wider audience. Increased engagement and search demand results in having a positive impact on your search engine rank.

Conclusion:

Embrace Responsive Design for your Website

Responsive design is an important part of any modern web strategy—and it should be part of yours, too.

If you’re ready to invest in a responsive website, check out our responsive design page to learn more about how much a new design will cost, as well as some other additional benefits we didn’t cover in this article.