Why Your New Website Should Be Responsive

Responsive Design

This article is for the benefit of those who are looking to get a new website designed in the very near future and want the best for them. We will try to answer the question, why your new website should be Responsive. Of course this is also going to help those who are still not aware of what Responsive Design is all about.

PC Sales Declining – What Does It Mean For Your Business
So why do we design websites? The ultimate motive is to reach out to as many people as possible and deliver the message that we want to get across to them. It is also true that it is the first time that PC sales are going down than the previous year. More and more people are now buying products that can replace their PC like tablets, and iPads and using them to go online and surf the net. They are also buying devices like smartphones, iPhones and the likes. And if more and more people are starting to use other devices, shouldn’t your website also be accessible on these devices?

Regular Websites Do Not Work On All Devices
Unfortunately, most websites do not open so beautifully on these devices as it does on a PC; simply because these sites were designed to work on a PC. One simple option would be to build a mobile version of your website targeting a particular device. But the number of devices is just too many, and new ones are getting added to the list of existing ones really fast. The devices also differ significantly in terms of screen width, resolution, and orientation. So the challenge for designing for every screen is huge and is not a practical solution to the problem.

Responsive Web Design has the solution
So how does Responsive Web Design solve our problems? Well, with this relatively new technology, you no longer need multiple websites targeting multiple devices. You just need one website that adapts to the device on which it is being viewed. It does so with the help of fluid images and smart use of CSS media queries by determining the width and resolution of the device. The website changes layout resizes images and adapts quite magically on all devices.

Imagine a website with responsive web design that adjusts to the device that your customers are using to view your business online. Imagine the content, the text, titles and the images actually moving so that they fit within the size of that specific screen. Whether it’s a tablet or an iPhone or an iMac or a PC desktop! You can literally see the adjustments happen as the browser size shifts from one size to another.

Benefits of Responsive Websites
This relatively new technology is being called the future of the web by many. It is a paradigm shift akin to the transition from table based layouts to CSS, which made a huge impact on the web design industry.

Easy to Maintain
Creating multiple versions of your website is costly and cumbersome. Considering just a desktop, iPad and iPhone for example, means that you will need to triple your efforts when looking to make an update to your web page. With Responsive web design you’ll avoid this extra effort completely. Your website will work seamlessly on different devices and so when you need to update your website you only update one platform through your content management system. In the long run this will save you time and help avoid headaches with having to work on multiple versions of your website.

Improves your SEO
The benefit here is in the fact that you will only need to optimize content for one link. The URL structure remains constant for all devices. With Responsive design you have one URL that is easy to update and optimize your content which in turn optimizes your content for all devices. Whether it’s a Samsung phone, iPad or desktop responsive web design makes it easy for the Google crawlers to index your website pages.

Higher Conversion
If you are selling more of your goods and services online then you are converting more. If your customers are finding your business and making purchases through the use of tablets and mobile devices then your conversion is increasing. If one of your many conversion metrics happens to be sales then you’ll see an upward shift in your top line as well!

Increases Mobile Sales
It’s no secret that the mobile revolution has been in full force for quite some time now. People are buying online and they are using their tablets and smart phones to make those purchases. To get them even more comfortable in doing so responsive design is a must.

It is estimated that within the next few years, there will be more people online using mobile devices than those using PCs. Therefore, it makes sense to be where your customers are, otherwise, you lose out on business.