Responsive web design is not optional anymore. If your site looks funny on mobile, you probably aren’t laughing when you see your marketing reports. That’s because more than half of online traffic in the United States today comes from smartphones and tablets. To reach the biggest possible audience, businesses everywhere are going mobile friendly.
What Exactly is Responsive Web Design?
Responsive web design is not exactly new.
It was first introduced in 2010. Since then, it has come to be used all over the world to help websites look as good on mobile devices as they do on desktop computers. Basically, it’s a web design method that prevents a site from looking distorted when it is viewed on a small screen.
How it can Benefit your Company
In our digital society, responsive web design is everything. In fact, about 80 percent of Americans have a smartphone. And, that number is growing every day. If you don’t have a mobile website, it’s pretty likely your competitors do.
A mobile friendly design is one sure-fire way improve digital marketing performance.
5 Benefits of a Responsive Site
- One Site for Every Device
- Optimal User Experience
- Better Search Engine Rankings
- No need for Messy Redirects
- Easy to Maintain
How Does it Work?
Before the mobile revolution, web designers only had to focus on desktop users. At the time, the common practice was to size web page elements, like images and columns, with pixels. With everyone viewing content on the same type of screen, there was no need to do it any other way.
But when smartphones were introduced, there was suddenly an urgent need to improve the mobile user experience. On a small screen, many websites were appearing distorted.
To solve that problem, responsive web design was adopted. Web designers now use fluid grids and Cascading Style Sheets to create proportional pages. Regardless of a user’s device, websites are now able to display each element of a web page in proper relation to all of the others.
After a redesign, a website’s pages will now automatically adapt when viewed on devices of different sizes, like smartphones or tablets.
Is your Website Responsive?
If your site has not been updated lately, it’s likely it doesn’t have responsive web design. You can easily tell just by looking up your company’s website on a mobile device. If it doesn’t look the same on your phone as it does on your desktop, it is not mobile friendly. It will then probably appear slightly distorted to any one of the world’s five billion people with mobile devices who can view your site. This poor user experience can then have a ripple effect on the rest of your marketing performance.
Don’t let an outdated website cause visitors to click away. Choose to upgrade to responsive design today!
