The number of people browsing the Internet using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets increases every year. With approximately 60% of organic search engine visits coming on mobile devices, it’s more important than ever to make sure your website is set up to provide a good mobile experience. Otherwise, you’re going to lose visitors to competitors who have catered to this large faction of web searchers.
The best way to address this need is with a responsive website. Responsive web design is by far the simplest and most effective way to create a mobile friendly website that will work properly on all devices.
What Is Responsive Design?
Before responsive design, creating a mobile friendly website required different websites to be built for each type of device. This is a clunky and inefficient way to construct a website. With responsive design, you only need to build one website, and it will work properly on all devices.
Some of the elements used with responsive design include:
- Text that is readable without requiring the user to zoom in
- Pages that can be viewed without horizontal scrolling
- Adequate space for tap targets
Essential Benefits of Responsive Website Design
The primary purpose of creating a mobile friendly website using responsive design is to deliver the best possible experience for your users. However, there are many other important benefits you’ll experience when you have a responsive website.
1. Improved SEO Results
You can have a great website, but it won’t do you any good if no one can find it. Therefore, it’s important to build your website in a manner that will allow you to achieve the best possible search engine rankings. Responsive design is crucial if you want to maximize your SEO results.
Google has included responsive website design as part of their algorithm since 2015. As a result, your search rankings will most likely be negatively impacted without a responsive website.
2. Better Website Performance
In addition, this improved website performance will help lower your bounce rate. Non-responsive websites make it harder for users to view and engage with your content:
- Text is harder to read
- Navigation menus are harder to access
- Buttons don’t always work properly
- Images may not be formatted properly to fit the size of your screen
This will often cause people to leave your site in favor of a competitor’s website that provides a better experience.
3. Lower Website Maintenance Costs
Responsive design reduces the costs associated with maintaining your website. This is due to the fact that it takes much more time to run multiple versions of your website than it does to run a single version. Without a responsive website, you’ll be forced to duplicate your SEO efforts for each version of the site. You’ll also need to purchase separate domains for each version. Finally, you’ll need to design each version differently to ensure it is compatible with the targeted device. Responsive design eliminates all of these issues, saving you a lot of money in the process.
4. Improved Link Building Ability
Link building is an important component of any content marketing strategy. You experience the following benefits when you have a strong backlink profile:
- Improved SEO results, especially when links come from websites with a high domain authority
- Increased web traffic due to additional opportunities for people to find your website when viewing other sources
When you have multiple versions of your website to support different devices, it makes link building more challenging. You’ll need to pursue separate link building opportunities for each website version, which is very time consuming. A responsive site eliminates this issue since you’ll only have one website requiring these link building efforts.
5. Improved ROI on Social Media Marketing
The overwhelming majority of social media usage is conducted on mobile devices. This means that when your social media marketing campaign drives links back to your website, most of the users who click on these links will be on a mobile device. If you want to get the most out of your social media marketing efforts, it’s crucial that your website provides a great mobile experience. By using responsive design, you’ll ensure you put forth your best impression for visitors who reach your website from social media platforms.
6. Optimize Your Online Shopping Experience
If your ecommerce platform isn’t easy to use on a smartphone, you’re going to lose out on a significant number of sales. Responsive design will ensure your ecommerce platform is properly optimized for a great mobile device shopping experience.
7. Improved Local Search Rankings
Many online searches are performed to find local businesses providing a specific product or service. These local searches are increasingly being performed on a mobile device. Responsive design makes your website more compatible with mobile devices, and this will often lead to a bump in local search rankings, making it easier for users to find your website.
8. More Effective Brand Messaging
Your website is an important tool to convey your brand messaging to your audience. Many of the design elements such as the colors, fonts, images, and logos used on your website help promote your brand and tell your story. Responsive web design ensures all of these elements are consistent across every device used to access your website. This will improve your brand recognition and ensure your entire audience receives the same messaging.
Webolutions Can Set Your Website Up for Success on Mobile Devices
At Webolutions, we provide comprehensive custom website development services to ensure your new website is built properly and will set you up for success for years to come. Our exclusive Website Right™ methodology creates higher levels of visitor engagement by incorporating the latest and most advanced website functionality, including responsive web design. This ensures your website is easier to navigate and conveys your brand experience with maximum impact.
You’ll experience a variety of benefits from our Website Right™ methodology:
- Higher search engine rankings
- Better lead generation
- Improved conversion rates
- Improved user experience across all devices
- Robust data analysis capabilities
- Robust social media engagement strategy
- Easy to use content management system
Our team will engage you in a process that includes market positioning in order to better understand your industry and where you fit in amongst your competitors. We’ll then create a brand platform that crystalizes your story and messaging. This information forms the foundation of your custom website development strategy, ensuring your hew website delivers the results you need to grow your business.
Contact us today to schedule a free consultation. We provide digital marketing services nationwide from our offices in the Denver, Colorado area.
