Responsive Web Design – How important is it?
Responsive Web Design – How important is it?
In today’s age how important is responsive web design? Well, first, what is responsive web design? Responsive web design describes the way that a website is built. It enables the site to correctly adapt to the size of the screen that it is being viewed on. That doesn’t mean it just shrinks down, it will actually collapse into sections, so that the viewer does not have to zoom or pan to view the content correctly.If you are viewing on a large computer monitor, a site may have several columns of text or photos. If the site has a responsive web design and you view the same site on a smartphone, you should notice that the text or photos have collapsed down to one column, the text size should remain very readable without zooming.
Wikipedia describes it as “Responsive web design (RWD) is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones) “
Ok, now we understand what it is, how important is responsive web design? Well, in February of 2015, Google announced that it would be giving priority to websites that display correctly on smartphones and other mobile devices, such as, ipads and various tablets. This announcement is sometimes referred to by webmasters as “Mobilegeddon” because it will dramatically change the page ranking structure. This was a bit of an overreaction, but, Google indeed does now give priority to mobile friendly or responsive web designs.
So, how does that affect me? You may have a beautifully crafted, efficient site that does everything that you need it to do. If it is not a responsive web design then google will not rank it as high as one that is. OK that may not be a huge deal unless you happen to be on the first page of the search. You can always pay Google via their ad services and they will happily rank your site, I’m sure you have all noticed those first three or four ranking sites at the top of the search that have a small yellow ad next to them, these are payed ads. The big deal though is that about 50% of browsing nowadays is done from a mobile phone or tablet device. I know I browse a lot from my phone when I am out and about, I am sure that most of you do too. If I land on a site that does not use a responsive web design, then I usually get frustrated having to scroll, zoom and pan to navigate to where I want to be on the site. In fact I will usually just leave the site and find another one that works on my phone. Does that sound familiar? That means that if you do not have a responsive web design, you are going to be losing potential customers or conversions, or whatever the goal of your website is. Now that is a big deal!
Get yourself a responsive web design today. Here at System 22, we are happy to give you a free quote and consultation. All of our sites are mobile friendly, SEO friendly, responsive web designs and we offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee…….get started today!
