We’ve all been there: entering a website that looks amazing on your desktop but all of a sudden becomes an incomprehensible mess when you visit it from your mobile. Moments like this make you wish you could become a freelance website developer and fix the website yourself!
Jokes aside, in these cases, you most probably will revisit it later on your computer. But the sad truth is that many visitors might have their first encounter with that website via mobile: meaning they will first see the incomprehensible mess. In other words, it is a guarantee that they will never come back to that page again.
I’ve been there many times. I remember being excited about a little Instagram clothing page and deciding to order the dresses right away. However, as soon as I opened their page on my mobile, I instantly changed my mind. Their website was hard to navigate through, the images and headings were out of size, and you couldn’t figure out what’s where.
So merely because their page was not mobile-friendly, they lost a potential purchase, and overall, they lost me as a customer.
So today, we will discuss how you can avoid situations like this by building a responsive website.
Let’s start with the simple definition:
What is a responsive website?
The responsive website is the one that follows the responsive web design, according to which the website should have a prime viewing experience across different platforms.
To put it simply, this means that your website looks good on desktop, but it also looks good on your phone or iPad.
Now, here’s another question: why do you need a responsive website?
To figure that out, we’ve listed the:
10 reasons to choose a responsive website
1) Mobile traffic is booming
More than 50% of your traffic comes from mobile devices. So it is another way to say that you lose 50% of your traffic if your website is only desktop-friendly.
People scroll through the Internet on their way home, during the lunch break, and pretty much every once in a while by checking their smartphones. So make sure your website is all ready when they come across it during those usual scrolls.
3) Mobile traffic will continue to boom
Now, not only is mobile traffic a significant part of overall traffic today, but it promises to stay and even increase in the future. We’re about to witness how tablet and phone users conquer the Internet and make desktop users seem old. Is your website ready for this huge change?
2) Google recommends it
Google officially announces that if your website is responsive, it is more SEO-friendly. Why? Because responsive websites are easier for Google to crawl and index. They also provide a good user experience, which is one of the highest SEO criteria for Google.
3) Better Mobile SEO
With a responsive website, you’ll also improve your mobile SEO. Again, this is because you are working on a single website, and so all the SEO practices you do will also enhance its mobile version.
4) It saves your money
Well, if you did not choose to go with the responsive design but at least decided to keep your website mobile-friendly, you would have to hire a new designer who would create a stand-alone mobile website. That would be really costly.
Just imagine paying a developer, the designer, not only to create but also to maintain your mobile website. We’re not even mentioning the separate SEO specialists!
5) It saves you time.
Even if the money is not a problem for you, developing a separate mobile website would take a lot of time. So having a responsive website is the best solution as it takes your already existing website and adopts it for different devices.
6) Better local SEO rankings
Again, responsive websites improve your SEO in multiple different ways. It impacts your local SEO, which is nothing but an advantage.
7) Faster mobile website
Today your website speed is everything. Your users are not ready to wait even a couple of seconds until your page loads. Responsive websites are inherently fast, which means your mobile website’s speed will be pretty impressive.
8) Easier social shares
When there is only one version of your website, you link only that. On the other hand, all your social shares would get confused if you had a separate mobile version.
9) Better user experience
This is the most obvious one, but we somehow did not mention it until now. A responsive website improves the user experience as it is incredibly user-friendly. And this is nothing but good news! Every website owner wants its visitors to engage with the page smoothly.
10) It’s trendy
Finally, today the responsive website is hot and trendy. So, if you choose to make your website responsive too, you’ll be following millions of others and staying in the trend.
So, what is there left to say? Make your website responsive and enjoy all these benefits!