Have you ever opened a website on your mobile device to find you have to pinch and zoom in order to see anything? This is what happens when you don’t take responsive website design into account through the building process.
Responsive website design is where the website is designed to fit on the smaller screen without any required zooming or horizontal scrolling. It is also optimised for touch screen with appropriate spacing for tap targets. The design is flexible and fluid, easily adjusting to the size of the screen the website is accessed on. Essentially, with responsive website design your website will look great and have excellent user experience whether it’s opened on a desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile.
Here’s why that’s so important.
1. Over half of your users access your website via their mobile devices
In 2018, 52.2% of global website traffic was generated through mobile phones. This figure has been on the rise for the last few years and is predicted to continue rising in the future. This means that if your website design is not responsive, you’re effectively making life difficult for over half of your potential customers.
2. User experience is a make or break situation
Today’s user is savvy and they’re also not going to waste time fussing around with unresponsive websites that are difficult to navigate. User experience should be a primary consideration in your website build process because it can mean the difference between a user staying on your website and potentially being converted into a customer and them going back to the search list to find a better solution. Responsive website design can increase lead generation, sales and conversions. If you’re interested, here are some more tips on optimising your website for user experience.
3. Google takes responsive website design into account in its ranking algorithm
A few years ago, Google decided that responsive website design was so important that it would begin penalising websites that were unresponsive. This means if you fall into the unresponsive category, you’re costing yourself precious rank positioning and, whether your product is superior or not, your competition will sit higher than you in search engine results. Exposure is everything. You need to do whatever you can to ensure your website comes up as high as possible in search results.
At CSQD, responsive website design is part of our website development process because we want to ensure that you have the best possible chance in this competitive market. If you have any questions about responsive website design, please feel free to get in touch.
