Responsive website Design (RWD) is a web design approach focused at crafting a website to ensure optimal viewing and navigation from a broad range of devices. Optimal viewing in this sense refers to ease of reading and minimization of the need to pan, resize or scroll content to get a better view. This approach maintains the same website URL across the range of devices. It just rearranges the website content in order for it to fit onto the screen size of any device. RWD is client-side hence the browser downloads the entire web page then resizes it to correspond with screen size of the device.
Responsive Website Design has many advantages. In 2014 the number of users accessing internet from mobile devices rose beyond that of those using desktops and laptops. It is therefore very important to ensure that your website conforms to this rising trend. The advantages that accrue from RWD include;
- Flexibility
It ensures that your website becomes fluid, moving freely across a range of screen resolutions and devices. This means that you website will be accessible from a range of devices including mobile phones, tablets, phablets and desktops.
- SEO benefits
There are many SEO benefits that accrue from RWD. They include;
- Contribution in building stronger links
The link that leads to the master website is the same link that leads to the mobile site. This means that all links and traffic are being channeled to a single site therefore reducing dilution of page ranking as far search engines are concerned. This enables you to concentrate your SEO efforts on one site improving your chances of visibility even more.
- Bounce rate reduction
Bounce rate often occurs if a website is slow or requires a lot of horizontal scrolling to achieve slight movement. This is likely to occur if a user opens a website on a mobile phone but is redirected to a mobile phone site. This is time consuming. It could cause user to decide not to access the website. If viewing content involves a lot of zooming, scrolling, panning and rotating, users are most likely going to leave your page fast. Both of these situations could lead to the search engines decreasing you rating owing to increased bounce rate. RWD helps you avoid all that. It eliminates redirecting hence reducing the loading speed tremendously. It also eases viewing of web content. This way you are sure to significantly reduce bounce rates.
- Recommended by Google
Google commands close to 67 percent share of the search market. When it speaks, search markers pay attention and listen. Google largely recommends RWD because responsive design sites have a single URL and maintains the same HTML irrespective of the device being used. This enables Google to efficiently and easily crawl, index and organize website content. A website with a separate website for mobile devices with a different URL, and different HTML would require Google to both crawl and index multiple versions of the same website. This is both harder and less efficient.
Google also recommends RWD because content existing in a single site is easier to interact with, link and share. This lead to improved user experience which is one of the ranking factors Google takes into account which is very important as far as SEO is concerned.
- Eliminates duplicity
Without RWD you would need to have to a different site for mobile devices and another for desktops. This would mean running the same website twice. This poses many management challenges. A mismatch in website content is prone to occur once in a while. This affects user experience .RWD comes in handy in ensuring that you don’t have to do that.
- Increased conversion rates
RWD provides satisfactory customer experience by maintaining a consistent look and feel of the website across devices. This is very likely to improve conversion rates since users are familiar with navigation and site use making it easy for them to use it across platforms.
- Consolidated analytics and reports
Since all traffic and transactions are directed to one site, you won’t need to track conversion paths, redirections, user journeys and funnels between websites. This way you can optimize analytics tools to handle a range of devices and ensure responsive reporting. Tracking and analysis of traffic will be condensed in a single report making monitoring easier.
- Enhances offline browsing
Offline browsing refers to the accessing of web pages when offline. These pages are downloaded and copied into your device when you are online and can be accessed later even when you go offline. This is made possible by HTML5. HTML5 enabled phones and tablets have proliferated everywhere around the globe. Responsive website design will therefore ensure that you utilize this to make sure more exposure to smart phone and tablet users.
- Cost effective
Since it requires just a single site, it reduces on the costs that would have been incurred in setting up two websites. This is because you only have to host one website and you only publish content once. You also won’t need to develop apps to help users access your website as it would have been the case if your website were not responsive.
- Easy to manage
Managing SEO efforts and strategies of a single master website is far much easier than managing that of two different websites. Having a different website for mobile devices and another for mobile devices demands more effort and certainly a lot more comprehensive strategies.
- Enables display specific content
There are rare cases when some contents are only relevant to users using specific devices. This is mostly the case for mobile phones. There could be instances where you may have a quite a large sliding banner on your websites homepage that in essence links to other pages. For better user experience, you may prefer smaller thumbnails of the banner for smart phones. RWD enables you to do that. It allows you to turn content on or off for each device.
With the distinct audience shift in favor of mobile browsing in the recent past, Responsive Website Design is becoming increasingly important. It is a tool worth embracing for digital marketing strategist. Tablet and smart phone sales continue to soar high globally. The number of people accessing internet from mobile devices is increasing tremendously every passing day. As a business, RWD is offering a chance to stay ahead of your competitors and establish a market share.
The beauty of it all is that our services are very affordable. Call today at 1-877-65-GOWEB or at www.creatingdigital.com/talk-to-us/contact-us/ and let us help you today!
