We all love using our smartphones. It’s a powerful computer that fits into your pocket, so of course, you’ll use it to search the web. Well, so do your customers. And if your website doesn’t look good on a small screen, you’ll miss out on lots of them. They’ll have a poor experience, and they’ll go to one of your competitors. But there’s much more to the story than just that. If you want to get to the bottom of why responsive design is so important for your website, be sure to read on.
However, before we dive into the reasons you need to use responsive design, let’s see what exactly it is.
What Is Responsive Design?
Responsive web design is one of the latest web design trends, and it’s here to stay. Simply put, a responsive site will react to the size of the screen of the user’s device. It’ll change the layout and adjust on its own to offer the best user experience. In essence, there are three main design elements that responsive design will ensure:
- Readable text without having to zoom in or out
- Adequate tap targets space
- No need for horizontal scrolling
So, your website will look and work great on both desktop and mobile devices. In the past, developers had to build a separate site for every screen size. But with so many different devices we have today, that doesn’t sound like it makes lots of sense, right?
Responsive design is more than a trend. It’s a shift in the way we build websites, and you’ve got to start using it. Here are the reasons why it’s so essential.
It Makes Your Site Accessible
The bulk of your website traffic comes from individual searches. If users can access your pages and have a great experience no matter which device they use, more of them will come back and convert into your customers.
Furthermore, people love shopping with their phones now. So, for all eCommerce websites, responsive design is a must. If you spend a lot of time creating an engaging landing page to catch visitors’ attention, you’ll want people to see it properly, whether they’re looking at it on a laptop or their phone. Responsive design will make it possible, and you’ll see a bump in sales.
Responsive Design Makes Your Site Easy to Manage
When you only have one website to worry about, it’s much easier to keep up with all the management tasks. Working on two versions of a site can quickly get confusing, and it takes a lot of time and effort. So, you’ll have to spend more to keep them in sync and performing properly.
However, with a responsive website, you can do all the changes you want in a single version of the site, and they’ll translate to all of them. Thus, it makes things easy to update and optimize.
Still not sure why responsive design is so important for your website? Let’s move on, then.
It Boosts Your SEO
More than half of all searches on Google are carried out on mobile devices, so Google prioritizes websites that work well on them. They’ll look at the mobile version of your site as a primary one. If it doesn’t work well, you will get buried in the SERPs, and the first page, let alone the top result spaces, will be out of your reach.
On the other hand, if your site performs great on mobile, you’ll get pushed up on the SERPs. As a result, you’ll get more visitors, and it’ll be much easier for you to rank for local searches if that’s what you’re after. You’ll get a chance to use SEO to boost brand awareness and grow your business even more.
You’ll Improve Online User Experience
We merely touched upon user experience, but it’s vital for the success of your website, so let’s talk about it some more.
Think for a moment about why people come to your site in the first place. They want to get some information from your pages. And if useless popups, irrelevant images, and wrong text size prevent them from getting it, they’ll leave. Users want information they came for right away, and responsive design will ensure they get it.
If people like spending time on your site and see things they want to see, they’ll want to buy from you. Offering a good user experience will also reduce your bounce rate, which is an essential ranking factor. So, both the people and the algorithm will like your site more, and you’ll see your revenue growing thanks to it.
It Promotes Link Sharing Across Devices
If you’re running an online business, the chances are that you spent a fair share of time finding your target audience on social media. Of course, you need engaged followers if you want to grow. But to engage them, your content must be easy to share and access.
The problem is that most social media users are on their phones when they’re online. Let’s say you share a link to your blog post. You think it’s good, and you want people to read it. But they click on it and get to a desktop version of your site. You can bet they’ll unfollow you right away.
Luckily, when your website is responsive, you don’t have to worry about which link you shared on which platform. Users coming to your site from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even TikTok will all get to enjoy it. They can even browse it on a smartwatch if that’s what they want. It’ll work on any device.
Conclusion
Young internet users are more oriented towards using their phones. Fewer and fewer people are using desktops, and that trend will continue. So, it isn’t anymore about staying ahead of the curve but keeping up with it. And now that you know why responsive design is so important for your website, be sure to use that knowledge.
