Responsive Design Is The Only Way

Why Businesses Must Incorporate Responsive Design Into Their Website Marketing Efforts

It is no surprise to anyone that mobile internet usage has been skyrocketing over the last few years. Mobile internet usage matched desktop usage in 2014 and has passed desktop usage in 2015. Even with this compelling evidence, the vast majority of business websites are still not mobile-friendly. This is not only causing a headache for users, but also a loss in business opportunity.

In this post, we explain why having a responsive website is so critical to your marketing as well as some key considerations to keep in mind when designing a responsive website.

Here are some of the undeniable reasons your website needs to be responsive.

1) Mobile usage is exploding.

This might not be a surprise, yet despite the impressive statistics, many businesses do not yet have a mobile website. Hopefully, reading through these stats from Smart Insights will light a fire to stop ignoring the need for a mobile website.

• 89% of online usage was through mobile devices while 11% was via
• desktop.
• In 2014, more than half of local searches were performed on
• a mobile device.
• In the United States, 56% of internet users only access the internet on a mobile device. 80% of internet users own and search on smartphones. Dominating desktop browsers.
• 61% of people have a better opinion of brands when they offer a good mobile experience.

2) Positive user experience is a must.

According to Google’s Think Insights on mobile, if a user lands on your mobile website and is frustrated or doesn’t see what they are looking for, there’s a 61% chance they will leave immediately and go to another website (most likely a competitor). It’s also said that if they have a positive experience with your mobile website, a user is 67% more likely to buy a product or use a service.

3) Blogging and social activities bring mobile visitors.

If you’re like most inbound marketers and have elements of blogging and social media incorporated in your strategy, you probably have been seeing increased mobile traffic. A recent study by ComScore cites that 55% of social media consumption happens on a mobile device.

With that being said, if you’re sharing out content links or links to your website and don’t have a mobile-friendly website, you’re not only going to experience high bounce rates and low conversion rates, but also a frustrated audience.

4) Responsive design is preferred for SEO.

On April 21st, Google will begin penalize websites that are not mobile-friendly. If the majority of your website traffic comes from mobile searches, there is a good chance not updating your current website to a responsive design will have a negative impact on any previous SEO efforts.

5) A speedy responsive website is key.

According to the Google PageSpeed Developers standards recommend that the content above the fold on a mobile device loads in under 1 second and the entire page loads in under 2 seconds. This is typically not possible when loading a desktop website on a mobile device. When a user has to wait too long for a page to load, there’s an extremely high chance they will leave your site.

Curious about how well your current website is performing on a mobile device? Google Developers has this nifty little tool to check your mobile site’s speed.

6) Responsive adapts to future devices.

One of the big benefits of responsive design is that the size of the template is designed based on screen size, not device. This means that no matter what size screen someone is viewing your website on, it will display properly for that screen size.

7) Have you considered when your target market is visiting your site?

According to this chart on Smart Insights morning commute hours are the highest in smartphones. Working hours the highest use is still desktop, while night time hours are topped off with tablets. This is something to consider when targeting your customers!

So, in the future, as new devices (TVs, watches, glasses, etc.) are being used for web browsing, your responsive site will still look perfect!

The Main Takeaway

Moving forward, it will be extremely critical that your website provides mobile users an easy-to-use experience. Having a mobile website is no longer simply a nice feature — rather, it is now a necessity and literally impacts the growth of your business.

Are you curious the possible return having a mobile website might have? I’d suggest getting in touch with Wide Open Technologies today to get on the mobile-friendly bandwagon today!