Responsive website design makes your websites more accessible to a larger audience by working across a range of devices and not just the desktop.
Responsive websites are also generally faster because they tend to be newer and utilise far more recent technologies that enable both speed and performance.
Responsive website design is a technique for building websites that dynamically adjusts both content and layout to fit the screen of whichever device it is being displayed on and is the way most website designers build today.
Responsive design works from the ground up, designs are engineered in such a way that they can adapt when they are constrained to smaller devices or expand across bigger formats. This creates a far more natural result for the user by preventing the need to pinch and zoom on their devices to see unoptimised design elements leading to a frictionless experience.
Responsive design is indicative of best practices, so there are various direct and passive benefits to responsive design. Generally this features a more modern design, better speed, performance and portability which can be a reflection of a thriving business.
While responsiveness is not the only factor for SEO rankings it has become a significant factor. Google and most search engines want to provide the best experience for their users and so they will always prefer to send their users to a mobile-friendly website than one that has not been optimised at all.
Boosting search performance will lead to increased traffic on your website, which will increase your marketing funnel to relatively scale your results in sales and conversions.
Mobile traffic will be your primary uplift in impressions because this is where the previous limiting factor was and depending on industry this could account for 80% of traffic that you are missing out on. You will also see an uplift in desktop traffic, since responsive design is good design for all devices your site will now be more appealing to search engines.
Other marketing channels will start to see increases in traffic and see a reduction in bounce rates, the main reason is that your website becomes more appealing to a wider audience. It’s more likely to be shared because of a higher customer satisfaction experience.
This effect is far more passive but certainly helps to snowball traffic results and can be the difference between getting your website in front of the right people.
Responsive design eliminates some of the challenges that non-responsive websites face, such as poor functionality and performance along with an inconsistent look and feel; all of which are trust factors for your users and trust is required to go from user to customer.
Responsive design very much considers how the user thinks and feels by incorporating modern User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) techniques, all of which are driving factors in allowing people to find their way around and reach their goals which are often the same as yours, conversions.
Responsive websites are increasingly using modern development techniques, while a lot of these help website performance through customer centric features, they also help the developers behind the scenes.
Modern websites make use of many low maintenance solutions such as quick access to libraries, automatic deployments and better collaborative experience. All of which make it easier to find developers who want to work on your website as well as reducing the time it takes them to make changes or new features.
For any business to run successfully, either physical or online, you need to maintain the best customer experience to continue and grow sales. If you don’t provide your customers with a satisfactory user experience, they will not come back.
When a potential customer visits your website, they expect to come across a design that is user-friendly, quick to load and functional. If your website is slow, dated or nonfunctional the savvy users of today will absolutely notice and associate that experience with your brand negatively.
When users encounter slow, non functional or poorly designed experiences their first instinct is to immediately leave and find the next resource.
In virtually every case the answer is yes. You can:
And there are almost no situations where this is not the case.
Responsive Design is a no-brainer for any new website, especially as there is virtually no difference in cost between responsive and static websites. In fact the opposite is becoming true, it is likely more expensive to make a website that isn’t responsive since the landscape and tools have all shifted to making this the default way to build.