The Importance of Responsive Web Design

Today’s digital culture has increased the importance of responsive web design. With the technology in our pockets improving year after year more leads than ever are increasingly coming from mobile platforms. In an ever-constant attempt to remove pain points in our sales approaches, this brings into value prioritizing a mobile-based design for your website. Businesses that fail to do this miss out on an overwhelmingly growing engagement market which in turn converts to customers.

Why Mobile Matters in Lead Generation

The internet is an infinite space of potential leads and in this sphere of influence, it has been shown a majority of global internet usage is mobile traffic. Studies show that over 50% of all web traffic is on a mobile device.

When we fail to build a website with this in mind it increases our bounce rate as people in the moment can’t navigate, or easily navigate, our websites. In a previous article, we touched on how we have five seconds to make an impression that will keep a potential client on our product. Taking that same concept to mobile, where the market share majority is, it’s paramount to the website’s success. If our clients struggle to navigate - AT ALL - in those first five seconds on our mobile design the game is up.

Key Principles of Responsive Web Design

If it matters so much- what are some ways we can ensure our website is responsive enough to handle the plethora of device sizes? Creating a truly responsive website is more than resizing text or adjusting images. Here are five core principles to keep in mind when discussing your website with your designer:

1. Fluid Grids: Build the framework of the design on a flexbox, or fluid grid, that will allow the elements to resize proportionally based on screen size. This will help keep everything aesthetic and pleasing no matter how much our clients resize the browsers.
2. Responsive Images: During the process of resizing if our images then become blurry our cropped strangely we lose the visual cues we were trying to give our customers. We want to use images that are of high quality to withstand these different changes.
3. Breakpoints: We want to design our websites with certain, common, breakpoints in mind. Building from the beginning with Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile in mind will keep us from many headaches attempting to retroactively make the site responsive.
4. Mobile-First Design: Ask your designer about starting with the smallest screen size first and then working their way to the desktop. This will ensure your website is most functional and feature-rich in the format that is continuing to gain market share each year. Attempting to make a beautifully designed webpage for desktop transfer appropriately to mobile can be difficult if not impossible at times.
5. Touch-Friendly Interactions: Nothing is more frustrating to a mobile or tablet user than a distinct lack of buttons. If the website is built around small clickable elements our touchscreen clients will struggle. Keep the buttons, inputs, links, and any other interactive components easy to tap. This includes designing with increased space around tapable elements to prevent misclicks.

Starting with these five principles of responsive design can save you and your designer hours of reconfiguration in the end step of your website allowing you to launch faster and smoother. They will enhance your professionalism and increase conversions.

The SEO and Performance Benefits

Another key benefit, and reason, to have responsive web design from the start focusing on your mobile website is search engine optimization. Because of the increasing market share search engines, like Google, tend to prioritize mobile websites first in their rankings. This means a mobile-first responsive design from the beginning is already working for you. A mobile-first indexing practice means that not having a well-made mobile design will directly affect your Google rankings.

Alongside rankings and visibility comes the concern of performance. Faster load times, optimized images, and less reliance on the larger files desktops can handle make mobile browsing smoother and more efficient. This will directly impact satisfaction and conversion rates as potential clients tap through your site. Oftentimes if a mobile site loads slowly I have about ten other notifications to distract me while I wait. Investing in a responsive design that ensures users have a quick, and enjoyable experience is vital to keeping them on task and responding to your call of action.

Quick Tip!

As a best practice test or make sure your designer tests your website on multiple different platforms! Doing this from the beginning can catch website-breaking bugs before launch.

Conclusion

Mobile website usage is on the rise and will continue to rise! Make sure you don’t get left behind in the surge by having a nonresponsive, slow mobile website. Not only will it make your potential clients happier and convert to sales. It will make you competitive against other businesses who failed to generate a responsive, mobile-friendly, website.