About 80% of people will leave a website if the content doesn’t display well on their device. Responsive web design improves user experience because no matter the screen size of the device they are browsing with, users are able to read and navigate the site with minimum resizing and scrolling. Below are just some of the reasons why it’s important to have a responsive website:
Brand Perception
Responsive web design translates into a positive perception of your brand and business as there isn’t any frustration with turning devices round and round, pinching out and in to read crucial information, or any long loading pages. Especially given the fact that people are browsing using watches, tablets, full screens, and TVs of many sizes, responsive website design has become imperative for any and all websites to minimize user frustration and make websites look professional and sleek no matter what device they are being viewed with.
Responsive Websites Affect Google Rankings and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Not only will responsive design allow your site to be seen in Google searches and help keep visitors on your site, responsively designed pages load faster than non-responsively designed pages. Speed is crucial when presenting a website for user interaction. If your website isn’t responsively designed yet, NOW is the time to make it happen before Google decides not to show your site in its search results. Using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool helps show businesses how responsive their websites are to users and will provide some useful tools to optimize a website; however, no optimization provides as great a website overhaul as having a responsively designed website.
Not only will your loading time improve with a responsively designed site, if you are planning on running an SEO campaign (and there are many reasons why you should), having a responsively designed site will save you money on SEO campaigns. Since only one SEO campaign needs to be created if your website is responsively designed, this cost-saving mechanism alone could justify the change.
Attract More Website Traffic, Leads, and Customers
Consider that even with COVID restrictions being lifted in many places, consumers are still primarily buying online. It’s expected that this trend will continue into the future with or without COVID restrictions in place. Thus, if your company has not been able to capitalize as much as possible on having a sleek, well-designed website to attract more traffic yet, there is still web traffic to attract and the adage of better late than never certainly applies.
Staying Competitive with a Responsive Website Design
Responsive websites can easily be scaled up or down for the myriad of screen sizes people browse with. Responsive websites are designed to be sleek and function with conversion optimization, easily turning website visitors into leads without unnecessary fluff. The goal is to stand out from competitors in the simplest way possible with your website. Considering that web visitors report making their first impressions of a website using the first main image that loads, having a sleek, simple design that loads quickly and perfectly sized is a hallmark principle of responsive design that converts to additional web user interaction.
Simply put, responsively designed sites are essential for ranking in Google searches, especially given their recent Mobile First implementation. Google wants to know that your site looks perfect on all mobile devices and will penalize you if it doesn’t. They are essential to move forward in a competitive manner. Responsively designed sites also increase the time users spend on your site, decrease the time it takes to load your site, and reduce overall web maintenance costs by integrating all versions into one completely fluid site. The moral of the story: Make sure your website is responsively designed!
