Your website visitors will come from various devices when they visit your site, so creating a responsive web design ensures that it’s optimized for the user experience across devices. People use their phones to browse the web, shop online, and interact with brands. Internet users that access the internet using a mobile device equates to 92.3% with over 55% of website traffic coming from mobile devices.
What is Responsive Web Design?
Responsive design is an approach to web design that requires a site’s interface to adapt to a device’s layout and optimize navigation and usability. It ensures that content and layout are consistent across devices and design elements are within the appropriate size for all orientations.
Think about the last time you visited a website on your desktop and then opened that same page on your phone. The content appeared in multiple columns on your desktop device, but on mobile, it adapted to accommodate a small screen size and appeared as a single column of content.
Why Use Responsive Design?
Responsive design has significant benefits and should be the default for any web developer. It is also Google’s recommended approach for mobile devices as it will perform better in search rankings and provide a better user experience compared to websites that aren’t optimized for mobile usage.
Benefits of Responsive Web Design
The major benefit is that a responsive website guarantees a positive experience for users across all devices. It also ensures that people are presented with essential information no matter what device they use to access your website.
Here are four reasons your website will benefit from responsive design.
Lower Bounce Rates
A responsive website means faster loading speeds and enhanced user experience, which also means lower bounce rates. Visitors are more likely to stay on a website and explore different pages when it keeps them engaged.
Bounce rates can be influenced by different factors, but ultimately, it refers to the percentage of people who visit your website and leave from the same page. They aren’t engaging with any content or clicking on new pages to explore your website.
To learn more about bounce rates, visit our blog, Bounce Rate: What It Is and How to Reduce It, to learn four strategies you can start implementing on your website.
Better User Experience
First impressions are everything, so you want to make sure that when someone visits your website, whether on their desktop or mobile device, it is a consistent experience.
Problems visitors can encounter with a website that isn’t responsive:
- Navigation menus are difficult to access
- Graphics improperly load
- Buttons or call-to-actions don’t work when clicked on
- Text is hard to read due to font size
- Images are not formatted to fit the size of your screen
A well-designed, responsive website not only improves readability but increases the time spent on a website and interaction with call-to-actions and content. As a result, this can increase leads and conversions with visitors.
Improved Page Speed
Mobile users have limited screen space and shortened attention spans, so you need a website that loads fast. 47% of users won’t wait more than two seconds for a website to load, resulting in lower conversion rates.
Reducing your website’s redirects, enabling browser caching, and eliminating unnecessary plug-ins are a few ways you can improve load speed.
Increased Visibility in Search Engines
Google is all about responsive design because it’s mobile-friendly, which boosts visibility on search engines. An optimized website for mobile devices will show up higher in results compared to a website that doesn’t utilize responsive design.
Keeping your website optimized and responsive is not a one-time thing. It’s an ongoing process that requires testing, monitoring, and improvement to meet the needs of your visitors.
Create a lasting first impression with your website. The Advanté-BCS team can design and implement strategies that effectively showcase your brand and have experience with leading solutions. If you need help creating a responsive design for your website, contact us online or call (804) 788-0048 to get started on a website that performs optimally for your business.
