Why you should use responsive website design?
Imagine your customers frustration. They’re out and about, browsing the web on their phone, and happen to come across your website. Instantly the frustration kicks in when they realise it’s one of ‘those’ websites. It’s from then that the countdown starts as to how long the customer will stay on your website before they give up completely and load up another website. Why? Because you haven’t used a responsive website.
And that’s another customer lost.
So what exactly is responsive website design?
Responsive website design will make a user’s browsing experience more enjoyable by making your web page adapt to the size of the screen it’s being viewed on. It’s as simple as that! One size fits all; be it a phone, tablet, laptop, or a desktop. I’m sure you’re familiar with the many different screen sizes of phones these days – android phone screens alone have hundreds of sizes. But don’t worry, responsive website design caters to all these sizes, which is important now, and will continue to become more important as more devices hit the market. At the end of last year 6% of the global population owned a tablet, 20% PCs and 22% owned smartphones; showing that smartphones are now more popular than PCs and can only be predicted to become even more popular.
The cure to frustrated customers
If you’re wanting to gain more customers (and lets face it who isn’t?), making your website responsive is the way to go. As well as it bringing in more customers it offers other benefits. The main benefit is the ability for the website to adapt to different sized screens. There are living examples of this demand everywhere you look, be it teenagers’ eyes glued to their phones while they should be checking to see if the road is safe to cross, or parents being taught how to use Facebook by their children. Everyone wants to be able to view websites on the move without the hassle of having to zoom in to read text or click a link. They want the easy navigation that a responsive website provides. Users will quickly leave your website if it’s not responsive (bounce rate is roughly doubled for non responsive sites), and what’s worse Google will automatically lower your rankings when it sees this happening.
Conversion rates
Having a responsive website will mean less users getting frustrated and leaving, which will increase conversion rates. Conversion rates are measured by people visiting your site and completing a specific action; that action could be filling out a form, buying products, or clicking the ‘Call’ button. Regular conversion determines how successful your website is both in popularity and economic success, and giving users a responsive website encourages them to do this.
Two more serious advantages
Less admin
You may be thinking, well why can’t I just have a desktop website and then a separate mobile website? You could, but why not make it easier for yourself? A responsive site has a single Content Management System (CMS) which allows you to update the content of the site just once, saving you the hassle of having to make numerous updates for say a mobile only website.
Brand impression
Just picture it. Your website looks incredible… on a phone….and a tablet too. Not a single thing out of place, everything to scale. You have a responsive website and your users love it. Subconsciously they know that you’ve not just thrown out another one of ‘those’ websites and they believe you are a company that cares, and that you want to give them an enjoyable browsing experience. These users will then go on to use your website regularly, and may tell their friends and their family about you which will result in more customers. Your conversion rates will climb higher and higher, and online that’s how you measure success.
Conclusion
When running a web page you need to be keeping up with the latest trends and enabling as many people as possible to see what you have to offer. This is exactly what having a responsive website means, catering to all devices and giving an enjoyable browsing experience. And you want to be keeping up with the competition don’t you? If so, you know what to do. You can read more about the responsive websites we offer or take a look at our portfolio to see what responsive sites we’ve built.