Responsive design is an easy way to make your website mobile friendly across devices, and it’s a bit of a ‘no brainer’ for online marketers. But with a ‘to do’ list as long as your arm, and ever tight budgets, how do you convince the money men that it needs to be done right now?
Google’s been urging webmasters to get ‘on board’ for years and there’s something almost sinister when they say, “If you haven’t made your website mobile-friendly, you should.” And where Google goes all other search engines follow.
Mobile is now big business and mobile queries have recently overtaken desktop search both locally and nationally. Given that there are now more mobile devices than adults in the country, it looks like a trend that’s set to continue, and that’s a lot of traffic you could be missing out on.
Back in 2015 Google announced an algorithmic update that would reward mobile sites with better rankings. Dubbed ‘mobilegeddon’ by marketing types the update has recently been incorporated into Google’s core algorithm. So not only will you have access to more traffic, but you’ll get a leg-up the search results.
Searchers are an impatient bunch, and if they can’t find what they want, they’ll quickly visit your competition. To make matters worse mobile searches are often done on the fly, while jumping on a bus or standing in line, when attention spans are even shorter than normal.
Responsive sites do-away with clunky navigation and endless scrolling by adapting elements to fit on the screen, thereby reducing page size and accelerating loading. You’ll also sidestep the slippery algorithmic slide caused by poor user engagement and a sky-high bounce rate.
Google’s been crunching the numbers and calculated that 61% of searchers will go elsewhere if your site isn’t responsive and 45% are unlikely to visit again. Given that it’s something you’ll have to do ‘sooner or later’, why not get ahead of the game?
10 reasons why you need to make your website responsive
- It’s said that first impressions count and that you never get a second chance to make a first impression; so don’t make a mess of it with a rubbish UX.
- Six out of ten of adults own a smartphone and there are more mobile devices than people in the UK.
- Mobile search is going through the roof and 60% of search queries are now made on mobile devices.
- Online shopping is big on mobile with 80% of consumers using mobile devise when out-and-about.
- Most social behaviour takes place on mobile; which means you’ll get more likes and more shares if you’re mobile friendly.
- Search engines prefer responsive websites and reward them with an algorithmic boost in the rankings.
- Searchers also prefer responsive websites and you won’t be handing-over your hard-won customers to your competition. Not only do your customers want it, but they expect it, and quite frankly they also deserve it.
- Because responsive sites are designed to fit the screen (and not the device) they’ll work on the next generation of mobile devices, from smart glasses and VR headsets to whatever else the tech wizards dream-up.
- HTML 5 is here and it means better offline browsing on responsive websites.
- Responsive sites look cool, unresponsive sites don’t; it’s really that simple.
So that’s the why? but what about the how? Easy just get in touch with the web project and we’ll walk you through the process step-by-step.
