With the huge rise in mobile device usage, it is more important now than ever that your site works on all platforms. If you don’t know what a responsive website is here is a quick overview of what you should be looking for.
When someone talks about the responsiveness of a website they are talking about how the site responds and looks differently on mobile phones and tablets. Older sites, also known as “fixed” sites, display the same on all platforms and are harder for mobile users to navigate.
There is also a difference between mobile-friendly and responsive. Mobile-friendly designs usually scale down the images and content to fit onto the screen whereas responsive sites are dynamic and change their layout based on the screen width.
Mobile Usage Statistics
1. 80% of internet users own a smartphone. (Smart Insights)
With cell phones constantly on the rise and more people switching to smartphones each day this number is going to continue to increase. If you already have a responsive website then that is good news for you because you are getting all the visitors. If you don’t have a responsive website then take a look at the next point.
Image source: https://www.wiredseo.com/mobile-marketing-statistics-2017/
2. Users are 5x more likely to leave a site that is not responsive. (Google Small Business 2016)
With this being said, if you currently don’t have a responsive website you are losing out on a lot of potential customers. If you want a good tool to check if your site is mobile-friendly Google offers a Mobile-Friendly Test.
3. 83% of mobile users say that a seamless experience across all devices is very important. (Wolfgang Jaegel)
Mobile users also believe that a website should be perfect and easy to navigate. Having your navigation/menu easily accessible is key so that the user can effortlessly change pages.
4. 53% of mobile pages are abandoned if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. (DoubleClick 2016)
All users, no matter what platform, want pages to load instantly. With the growth of technology, that’s just what people expect, and as a web designer, you have to deliver something as close to that as possible to satisfy them.
5. A 10s page load time has a 123% higher bounce rate than a 1s page load time. (Think With Google 2017)
If you get past the 53% of visitors that abandon your website there is still a high chance they will leave your site just after briefly looking at it. Bounce rates refer to how many visitors view just one page and then leave your site.
Image source: https://www.wiredseo.com/mobile-marketing-statistics-2017/
6. 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. (CMS Report)
People look for a good website because that is how you show your business to people without them coming into an actual store. Your website is the face of your store and promotes your company 24/7.
Easier To Manage
Running a responsive website is less costly than running a mobile and desktop version of your website. Even though it may cost more upfront to build a website like this, it offers less maintenance and setup time. It is also easier to manage just one site because when you want to update your content you only have to do it once.
A responsive website adapts its content to each users’ needs, which makes it much easier to manage and improves the overall look of your website.
Improves Your SEO Ranking
Responsive websites have a higher ranking than non-responsive and mobile-friendly sites in SERPs (search engine results page).
With the new mentality that websites should be a “user-focused” experience and be built with a high-quality design, your users will be around for a long time.
Google also recommends that you have a responsive design. Not only does it look better for the user but it also improves your SEO (search engine optimization) across all platforms. Having a responsive website cannot only save you money by only making one website but also to help retain your customers and keep them coming back.
Better User Experience
Not only is improving your ranking crucial to getting new customers, but the user experience is important because you need to keep those new customers. Having a responsive website improves the overall user experience, therefore, making your potential customer feel like you are a good choice for whatever their need may be.
Unresponsive websites have information scattered all over, text that is cut off, images that cover the whole screen, and endless pages. This makes it hard for your users to navigate your website and gives them a bad experience with you, usually resulting in you losing business.
To avoid problems like these it is a good idea to invest in creating a new responsive website if you don’t already have one. The benefits and ROI you will receive will outweigh the costs in the beginning and will greatly increase your number of customers. Is your website responsive? If not, check me out.