Talks about responsive website design have been around for years now, so engaging in one of them in 2015 feels like digital archeology. However, given how many sites still ignore what we should now know as a capital sin, we believed it high time for someone to scream at them: get your sh** together and turn your site into a mobile friendly website!!
Well, now we got that out of our systems, we can go back to our best lecturer voice to tell you why you’ve been making a big, no, a huge, no, wait, a colossal mistake by not having a responsive website by now. Your online marketing surely is suffering by it, which means your business is struggling as well. If it isn’t, then is just by dumb luck, because (you can repeat with us by now) not having a responsive website is insane. We have the whole article to answer why and that’s precisely what we’re gonna do.
But first – do you know what website responsive design really is?
Perhaps we were wrong in assuming that everybody should know that website responsive design actually is. But that’s an easily solvable mistake. In fact, it’s as easy as typing this sentence: responsive design ensures that a site elements are re-adjusted to provide the optimum user experience in all kinds of devices.
In other words, it’s a site that’s prepared to be perfect and beautiful for desktop and mobile users alike, without having to create two separate sites. Easy, right? Moving on, then.
Why have it in your website?
We’ll assume (again, we know, but we are pretty sure we’re right now) that you want to get your message to as much people as possible. That means that you want people browsing the Web to end up in your site and get the best impression possible from it, regardless they are accessing from a desktop PC, a tablet, a smartphone or whatever. Well, you won’t be able to do that unless you have a responsive website design which, in turn, will provide you with the following advantages.
- Great user XP: would you ever come back to a site that you have to zoom in to a 500% when accessing through your phone to properly enjoy it? We didn’t think so. Internet users are relentless: if they don’t like how a site’s layout, they’ll bail out and never return. The solution is to have the perfect user experience, which means the user doesn’t have to resize, scroll, zoom or whatever to make the site work properly. All that is done automatically by the site’s design.
- Flexible content: the idea of your site being adjustable doesn’t mean that it automatically turns into something completely different when changing platforms. On the contrary, responsive design makes that change unnoticeable, keeping the aesthetics, structure and content uniform across devices, thus saving your brand’s image and coherence.
- Easily manageable: if you don’t have a responsive website design, then you already know that managing a desktop and a mobile site separately is a pain in the a**. That’s not only because you have to adapt your content for two different platforms but you also have to come up with different SEO campaigns. Needless to say, you’d minimize your efforts if you went responsive on your site, especially in the design department.
- Cost effective: tied to the previous point is the fact that you don’t have to spend as much if you only work in one site. You don’t have to pay for two different structures, you don’t have to adapt your contents and you certainly don’t have to deal with troubles arising from redirections and UI elements.
- Google loves it: let’s say that all of the above didn’t quite convince you – you’re a tough nut to crack. That’s ok. Perhaps the fact that Google recommends responsive web design when talking about mobile configuration is enough to bring you to the responsive side. That’s right – the search engine all marketers love to serve is a fan of responsiveness and not without a reason. Having just one URL and HTML structure for a site makes it more easy for Google to crawl, index and organize search. But that’s not all. Contents from a responsive site are far more shareable, since the URL will display the content in the best way possible according to the device from which is being accessed. This is key for the user XP, a factor that ranks oh-too high in Google’s priorities.
There you have it. Unless you hate your visitors, potential customers and your own business, not having a responsive website is pretty stupid decision. Having one means a better user experience, far less costs and a closer relationship with Google’s mechanisms. Don’t you want that for your site?
