3 Reasons You Need A Responsive Website
The web is a buzz about responsive design. It’s not a new thing but a lot of people don’t even know what “responsive design” means. A responsive website changes its layout automatically based on the type of device it being viewed on. When on a desktop computer or laptop you get the normal user experience. That same layout that is supposed to look good on a huge monitor all of a sudden is tiny on your iPhone. When your site is set up to be responsive it knows what device the user has and gives him a more user friendly experience. That includes both landscape and portrait views. Things like a condensed navigation and more simpler design that works better on smaller screens.
So why is the whole responsive thing so important? Well here are 3 really important reasons.
1. EVERYONE HAS A SMART PHONE
The amount of people that are doing searches or looking up your website on their mobile phone or tablet is growing every day and you want to make sure those user have a positive experience when they come to your website. If your site is responsive and your competitors sites are not, you have an advantage over them in the marketplace.
2. GOOGLE LIKES RESPONSIVE SITES
The largest search engine company just announced that they really want you to make your website responsive because if you do your site will show when someone does a search from their mobile device/tablet. If you site is not responsive they do not want to give their users a link to a website that they deem is not responsive and will give the user a bad experience. So they will not show your company at the same ranking as when someone did a search on their desktop computer. This will only apply to searches done from mobile/tablet.
3. YOUR COMPETITION IS ALREADY DOING IT
Like I said in top of this page, responsive design is not a new thing but because of Google’s recent announcement it is showing that the importance of having a responsive website huge. It is or can be, a company’s number one marketing tool. Many companies have already updated their sites due to Google recent announcement. For the companies that understand the importance of this they are a step ahead already.
There are many more reasons but the main thing to keep in mind is that mobile searches are going to just continue to grow as wireless speeds get faster and more and more people use their smart phones and tablets around the world. The world is changing where as before you would say, “I’ll look that up when I get home to my computer just a few years ago”, you don’t have to wait anymore. You just pull out your smart phone and look up those shoes you want or that place to eat or a plumber in an emergency. People use of smart phones to search on Google has already surpassed search via desktop (searchengineland.com) and so making sure your website works well for those millions of people is extremely important.
Global smartphone use will reach 2 billion by 2015 (Bloomberg)