Why responsive design matters
In digital marketing and web optimisation circles in recent months, it’s almost inevitable that you will have heard of responsive design and the impact it makes on the user experience of your site and your SEO campaigns. Web development is no longer attached to simply the look and feel of your site – the way Google reacts and interacts with your site is today a prime consideration from the outset, and a far greater amount of synergy between web developers and us ‘SEO guys’ has to be put in place for successful strategies to work to the best of their ability.
In this article, we’ll look at responsive design, and why we feel it’s one of the most important internet trends in recent years.
It’ll save you money
Before the age of the smartphone, and the exponential rise in people using their mobile devices as their primary way of accessing the internet, mobile websites were fairly far down the list of priorities for small and medium sized businesses. Most of the problem was money – having two different websites developed meant two different processes, and it therefore double the amount of time and money spent on it. Using an automatically responsive design, web developers today can save client’s money but making just one website.
It’s good for Google
As I’m sure you’ve heard, and as has been covered earlier on in this blog’s history, Google announced earlier this year that they would be including mobile accessibility within their algorithm – potentially penalising people who don’t have an accessible site on a mobile device. With responsive design it’s easier to circumvent any action taken by Google –
It’s attractive
Users expect things to not only feel good to use, but look good. We live in a visually aware world online – and with responsive design it’s easier to make things both comfortable and appealing to look at without the need to have a huge amount of programming knowledge or web design skills.
It just works
The problem with many early smartphones, and the sites that were developed from them, is that the technology wasn’t quite developed enough to work properly or make a worthwhile difference to the lifestyles of their users. Why responsive design matters however is that it just works – it is device agnostic (meaning that it will work across all platforms and operating systems without trouble) and very few users will report any issues with responsiveness, text, typography size or the like.
It is clear that this device agnostic, responsive approach is the way forward for even the smallest websites – and it’s important for businesses of any size to recognise the need to adapt to this way of thinking. As an affordable, attractive offering, responsive design will see many more changes, alterations and developments to make it even more streamlined and accessible to both businesses and mobile users around the world.
