What is a “responsive” website?
For a website owner – it should mean having a website that automatically looks its best on all size devices from Desktops to mobiles. It should mean that your users get fast loading web pages that are easy to use.
For the website developer – it means delivering a consistent good user experience no matter what device the website is being viewed on and that content is presented in an easy to follow manner on each of these devices. Web Developers need to ensure your website works fluidly on ……
1) Desktops
2) Laptops
3) Tablets/ iPads
4) Smartphones
Why do I need a responsive website now?
Until the arrival of the iPad there was no need for any of us to even wonder what “responsive” web design and making websites iPad friendly became an option ( but not a requirement) The arrival of the “smartphone” has meant that we all need to take the word “responsive” as an important feature in websites ( and thus a higher level of interest has grown in having websites “responsive” ) and in April this year when Google announced ” we are starting mobile friendliness as a “ranking signal” – the whole web community has woken up to “responsive” now becoming an absolute – as the effect of this announcement is that searches done on smartphones – will result in “no shows” for websites that are not smartphone friendly.
Yes, you do need a responsive website now -(unless your focus is on ensuring you have less visitors to your website, which I am sure is not the case) Because the phenomenal growth in smartphone usages – up to 33% (and growing) of all web searches are done on smartphones and if your website is not responsive then a minimum of three things will happen when users visit your website on their smartphone:-
- It will be cumbersome for visitors to navigate your website, having to drag it left and right, enlarge type to view and find it hard to click through to sections – and you do not need to make it hard work to use your website, because the visitor has so many other options on the web
- Images and content will not be as fast or smooth as a responsive website – so you are delaying them in viewing your content – and they move on
- Most importantly – if google ranking detects you are not smartphone friendly (i.e. responsive) then you are most unlikely to appear in any google searches done on mobile phones.
The power of “Goggle” is such that is is forcing people to move to “responsive” web design and while that many seem like a pain for “businesses” that are not responsive, it is positive for end users to know that websites they search for will work well on their chosen device. The challenge to business owners is to deliver a quality responsive website that attracts more visitors.
What next?
Take the free google responsive test on Handyweb.ie and we will send you a picture of how your current website looks on different screen sizes.
If your website is responsive there is nothing to do.
If not you have 3 choices …
A) Convert your current website to responsive – can be more work than the next two options
B) Use a mobile theme – google don’t really like you having two websites with same content so you need to be careful how you implement this. or
C) Get a fresh responsive design that does not oblige you to make compromises as you will have to do with the first two options. – This way you can get the most up to date responsive styling without compromising.