Why should your website be mobile friendly?

Why Should Your Website Be Mobile Friendly Responsive web design has become the go-to solution for businesses who want a user friendly interface and higher customer retention. If your company has come this far without taking advantage of all the benefts it has to oferr you may have already begun to see lower visitor numbers and a disappointing conversion rate. As a responsible business ownerr you’ll probably need convincing before paying to upgrade your web presence to one that includes responsive design. Howeverr by opting in you’ll soon see a return on investment that will make it worthwhile. In a nutshellr responsive design is just better than what has gone before and in order to keep up with the competitionr you’ll need it too. Responsive web design is crucial for the majority of businesses because it allows your users to achieve their goals quickly and smoothly. The important elements of your website can be pulled up on a smart phone and appear as a fully functional version of the originalr complete with all the utility you’d ofer to customers on a laptop or desktop computer. If you fail to provide a mobile-friendly experience like this for your visitors they won’t hang aroundr they’ll simply click away and complete the action or purchase on a rival site. Unhappy customers are not good for business and neither is going up against a major search engine. Google have recently confrmed what many insiders have suspected for some time – sites that are not optimised for multiple users will slip down their search rankings. Google bases their rankings on how useful a page is for the query a user has enteredr plus the utility of the site – for exampler can a user complete the action they would like to?Your page may be completely relevant to their searchr but if visitors cannot access the content easily across a number of devicesr your site may receive a less than positive review and be placed lower in the search results. If your company is reduced to a second or third page entry you’ll lose a considerable amount of trafcr as people naturally select links from the frst page. Google have also pointed out that companies which have a single responsive website – rather than one standard and one mobile version – are far easier for their bots to discoverr because there is just one URL. If your site is responsive and ready to service mobile customersr you can take advantage of many tools and helpful apps like the click-to-call buttonr this enables a web

user to make a voice call to your company immediately. Potential customers can also read reviews about your business or even fnd you in a busy place using Google Mapsr both keenly relevant to the needs of mobile users. Branding is one of the ways in which we build a relationship of trust with a customer and keep them coming back for more of the same. This is pertinent to responsive design for two reasonsr frstlyr people do not feel confdent in a site they cannot easily navigate and secondr in order to create a uniform brand you’ll need responsive design to produce a consistent web appearance; however your clients reach you. In today’s market there are only a handful of reasons why a company may choose to stick with static design on their web page. Those who do not rely in any signifcant way on web trafc to drive salesr or those who have few competitorsr or those who have already looked into responsive design and found it was not right for them. For everyone elser if you want to stay ahead of the curver responsive design is the only way forward for your website. Responsive web design features Until recently web designers created diferent pages depending on where they would be viewedr a tablet for example has a diferent screen resolution to a laptopr and so the content would be optimised for viewing on that particular device. Howeverr responsive web design has revolutionized the way in which users look at the internetr it has created an across the board experience allowing us to view pages on a PCr smart phone or notebook in exactly the same way. When they build a siter designers use the same coding on any number of resolutionsr giving every device the same degree of functionality. Responsive web designers believe that their clients’ web pages should be accessible to every visitorr giving them an optimal experiencer regardless of the device they using. This kind of intelligent response to a web user’s actions keeps your company relevant in an ever changing online market place; it boosts your e-commerce fgures and makes visiting your site an enjoyable experience. In technical terms there are three key features of responsive web designr the secret ingredient is generally considered to be media queries. These are flters added on to the CSS or Cascading Style Sheetsr afecting the look and feel of any individual page. CSS is a highly useful tool for web designersr but by tagging on a media queries adaptionr the process of resizingr rendering and orienting a page becomes far easier. Another linchpin of responsive design is the fexible layoutr this is based on a grid formationr ideal for formatting marginsr positioning the key elements of a page and getting the spacing just right. This means a

designer is not limited to a certain number of columnsr they can choose as many or as few as is appropriate for the page. A fexible layout also removes the need to work out the layouts and text size based on pixels. Insteadr designers use percentages which enable them to adopt a far more fuid approach to producing each page. Pixels work well in photographic imagesr but are a clumsy tool to use over a number of devices. One pixel may be expressed as three dots on a phoner but ten dots on a desktopr changing the quality of an image considerably between devices. The third component of responsive design involves the use of CSS or a dynamic resizing function to create fexible imagesr videos and other content. Text can fow relatively easily as the containing area resizesr but in order to spread this across more complex segmentsr web designers need to use diferent techniques. Dynamic resizing gives a web designer greater control over how a page behaves and enables them to add or remove components as needed. Taken a wholer these multiple technologies mean visitors can enjoy the feeling of familiarityr regardless of what device they happen to be usingr or will be using in the future. When a mobile user changes from landscape to portrait moder the intuitive design will ensure the page gets bigger or smaller. Furthermorer each elementr be it an imager textbox or video will also resize itself to correspond with the diferent dimensions. If you have ever tried to access a website and discovered that it was almost impossible to navigate around without shrinking and enlarging the text or buttonsr you’ll understand why responsive design is considered good practice for the majority of website owners. Responsive web design Vs Mobile web design Until quite recentlyr mobile web design was considered far more relevant to modern consumers than it’s responsive counterpartr this approach sees designers using smart phones as a starting point and upgrading the technology progressivelyr through to notepadsr desktop computers and beyond. This method meant that companies needed two websitesr one for their mobile pages and one for PC users. In the early golden years of mobile web designr there were a number of reasons why experts thought that web applications should always be designed frst for use on a mobile device. Most important of these was the prevalence of smart phones and the fact that their popularity was continuing to skyrocket. By creating a platform that favoured these millions of usersr companies could promote their service or product to what was seen as the next generation of computing consumers. Secondlyr mobile design was said to foster a cleaner concept without room for extraneous elements or unnecessary page clutter. In a screen the size of that on a mobile phoner there simply is not enough room to crowbar in extra buttons and widgets – insteadr a design team had to focus on what was actually needed. By giving users a clear route to what they wantr it was assumed that their experience would be betterr fasterr leave them more inclined to return or convert them into a paying customer. Mobile applications were thought to have far more utility than PC based softwarer what users expected from their laptop paled in comparison to the capabilities ofered on smart phones. From a digital compassr to gyroscopic efectsr touch screen inputs and voice controlr designers hoped to build on these tools to produce modern web design that was not limited by the constraints of a PC. Although there are pros and cons for the adoption of a mobile site to run parallel to a main siter responsively designed pages are ideal for retailers who want a robustr homogenous website with plenty of utility for every user. A single site also simplifes marketing campaigns; there is only a need to manage one site and one SEO strategy. Thereforer a website which features responsive design can save companies time and moneyr but also provide a seamlessr convenient way for customers to shop.

Responsive web design statistics When a team of designers build you a responsive website you know it will adapt intuitively to whatever device it is accessed fromr but where is the evidence that proves this is a factor in commercial success? The content of digital marketing companyr Brand Pointr found that over 90% of consumers buying decisions are afected by visual elements. In other wordsr if people land on your site and like the look of the placer they are more likely to stay and buy. Screen resolutions are changing all the time as new devices reach the marketr web developers Spyderweb found that in 2010 there were just 97 unique screen resolution sizesr but by 2013 that fgure had leapt to 232. The only way of tackling this increase is to have a responsive website that is optimised for every customerr whatever device they favour. Customers are driven away by high wait times and pages that take too long to appear; even way back in 2009r 47% of people expected a load time of just two seconds on a webpage. In a study carried out by cloud service providersr Akamair it was also found that 40% of web users clicked away if they had not gained access to a page within 3 seconds. That is a pretty slim window of opportunityr and it’s fair to assume that people’s expectations have increased since this study was compiled. Although external factors like a lack of Wi-Fi or 4G can also afect wait timesr the importance of speed for business sites cannot be underestimated. Wed designers can write code for your responsive site that makes it selectively load the elements neededr or even bring in graphics at a later stage. Design matters because it can have a huge impact on the number of new visitors to your pagesr these are people who have reached you through typing in a specifc search criteria and decided to click on the link to your site. Web designersr Domain7r have reported that in the case of their client Regent Colleger there was a leap of 99% in unique visitors after a revamp of their responsive web design. If your mobile pages leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth of your visitorsr they are far less likely to view your entire organisation favourablyr and they’ll tell their friends. Industry experts at the Search Engine Journal discovered that 57% of people would never recommend a company that had poorly designed pagesr strengthening the case for a consistent web strategy that performs the way your customers want it to – wherever they happen to be.