Why Responsive Web Designs are Mandatory In 2015?
Your Site has to be Much more than just a Mobile Site
Fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images, and CSS3 media queries; these are a few of the components actively used for responsive web designing and development - all these to provide that optimized user experience across all the devices. Responsive web designs have prominent benefits to most of the businesses - far more than having a mobile site. The design empowers your entire website to completely adjust to all the devices - making the complete content available - along with a code that flawlessly accommodates several screen sizes and resolutions. Unlike a mobile site - these responsive websites offer a complete - information rich web experience, the one that consumers from today’s generation expect from their product or service provider.
Expectation Setting for Viewers
Scenario where there is bare minimum information on your website - in the past - then it was fine. However; the times have changed and so have the mentality of the users and business owners. Now business owners believe that the users have grown demanding and hence a mobile website is supposed to be at par with the desktop website, and if in case they are better than the desktop sites - nothing like that. It clearly means that your users are expecting the full fledge experience of your desktop website on their hand held device or smartphones, which includes easy navigation, access to tolls such as search bar and shopping cart, empowerment to perform activities such as making purchases or submitting forms and so on.
Designers and developers working for businesses should not forget that a visitor on your website will view your site on multiple platforms, first on the desktop in his/her office, then on their smart phone during lunch break or tea time and then on their tablets at home - and believe me - they would find it really frustrating when your website appears and responds differently every time they visit your site. This is where a responsive website pitches in, making it easy for your customer to find - understand and share your content - creating an overall better User experience, that also enhances your brand image.
Reduced Loading Time and Bounce Rates
Bounce rate a stage where; BECAUSE your website is not working properly on the mobile devices of the users and they leave your page after just a few clicks - upon detecting high bounce rates GOOGLE is going to give your site a lower quality score and so rank it lower which will decrease your site traffic - and trust me that is not at all good for your brand image. A responsive design is at your disposal to reduce this bounce rate as the view your site adjusts to various devices and that too consistently. At the same time responsive sites refrain from using queries to redirect users to another URL - like a mobile only site does. This certainly reduces the load time on a page - increasing Google’s and user’s trust in your site and brand - increasing the search rankings.
Its Google’s verdict
Google thinks responsive web designs should be industry best practice and that is due to obvious reasons. Google ranking process includes one of the factor Site ranking and we all know that more traffic means more credibility. A separate mobile version and a desktop version of your website would result into split traffic resulting in split credibility and ranking as well. Google is likely to consider and rank your website as two different identities as practically it is looking at two different sites. This also means that you will have a single - core domain - single set of pages and files - making life easier for google to crawl and index your content. Responsive websites also help you with organic search rankings - and hence ideal for search engine optimization (SEO).
Convenient Tracking
You have several versions of your site and so who is going to have all the trouble? They are the marketers who will face challenges in evaluating your site’s statistics and making informed decisions. But in case you have a simple - single - responsive website, gives you the options and convenience to track visitors and traffic purely based on the clicks received, as it will not be divided in a number of website versions. It helps you gain that accurate representations of goal conversions - count of visits - source of visits and much more.
Efficiently Cost Effective
Flexibility Features Work to your Advantage
One of the reasons why responsive designs are gaining popularity is due to its forward thinking strategy the flexibility to adapt to forthcoming devices - which is not the case in mobile only sites. A responsive web design is as future proof as it can be, even with the introduction of new and advanced devices.
CMS Compatibility
Be smart enough to check out whether your content management system (CMS), the one that you are using or the proposed one, supports and is compatible with the responsive design. A variety of CMS platforms including Sitefinity, Kentico, Sitecore, etc., cater responsive designs through their built-in features. One more step towards cost effective responsive site development - that also empowers you with future template development while the site is adaptable to work seamlessly across devices.
Responsive Sites - The Must-Have Technology
Increasing use of smartphones and tablets implies businesses to have websites that not only are mobile friendly but also are consistent and user friendly across devices. Responsive websites help you offer and prove better user experience to all your customers - saves a lot of time and money in a long run - while it also provides a competitive advantage over businesses that are yet to invest in this user friendly and convenient technology called Responsive Web Design.