If you’re not using responsive web design yet, it might be time to consider this approach before you get left behind.
You’ve probably attempted to access a desktop-oriented website on your phone before, and you know that it makes for a miserable user experience with all the pinch-zooming and side-scrolling required just to read a simple piece of text.
With the number of users browsing the internet on their smartphones constantly on the rise, the most reliable software development companies know that building a responsive website will only get more important in the future.
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What Is Responsive Web Design?
Responsive web design is exactly what it sounds like. It is the best way to respond to the consumer expectation of having websites look great regardless of the device used to access them. The site’s design responds to the users’ preferences and adapts to various devices’ different viewports, resolutions, and sizes.
You no longer need to have a separate mobile version of your desktop website. Instead, the one version that you do have responds and scales depending on the device used to open it.
Main Reasons Why Business Owners Should Consider Responsive Web Design
The explanation outlined above should be enough of a reason to consider responsive web design. Still, we could break it down into several specific reasons that your business could benefit from this design approach.
We chose not to bore you to death by listing each and every one of these reasons, and we’ll present the top 4 reasons why responsive design can be a great asset to your business instead. Let’s get started!
- Mobile Traffic Is on the Rise
The internet has changed a lot, not only in its relatively short lifetime but over the past few years as well. The most significant change has been seen in the steady increase in mobile web browsing.
Since 2016, mobile users have been the dominant presence on the internet. If companies want to stay relevant online, they must respond to the demands and expectations of this growing number of users.
Since mobile browsing is now the norm, most users are unwilling to endure an experience that wasn’t tailored to their needs. On the other hand, almost 3 out of 4 users are more likely to revisit a site if it works well on their phone.
Images and content on a website that wasn’t made using responsive design are often inflated or distorted, and this can cause much frustration to the user. Inevitably, this will lead your prospects to the competition unless you act fast and make the necessary changes.
- Responsive Design Is Much Better for SEO
Even if your users don’t seem to care about the responsiveness of your website for any reason, you can be confident that Google does. The biggest search engine in the world favors responsive sites in its search rankings greatly, as do its less-talked-about competitors.
If you use responsive design to build your website, you make it easier for Google’s indexing algorithms to “crawl” your website, which reduces the margin for error when it comes to your on-page SEO.
If your website is not optimized for viewing on a smaller screen, it will more than likely lose its current Google ranking. This is why we recommend hiring the best custom web design company you can find and have it build you a fully responsive website.
- Responsive Websites Offer an Improved User Experience
Responsive websites can load on pretty much any device out there. This means you’ll have a much wider pool of prospects to choose from and that the users who end up on your website will likely have a much better user experience and won’t be forced to wait too long for the pages to load.
One of the great side-effects of this is the positive perception your brand will accumulate over time. If you make an effort to make the users’ time on your website more enjoyable, they will feel more valued by your company and spread the word.
- Having Only One Website Reduces Maintenance Costs
Not that long ago, when mobile browsing first became a priority for companies, having an entirely separate mobile site was the most popular solution.
Companies would take the desktop version of their website and use it to create a completely different site that works on mobile, to varying levels of success.
The main problem with this approach is that even the businesses that managed to pull off the adaptation set themselves up to double the number of updates, as they were suddenly dealing with two websites instead of one.
Responsive web design allows you to have just one website, accessible to all devices, on the same URL. This means there’s less work involved in trying to maintain and update it.