Responsive Web Design – Why it is important for Business

Looking into the current variety of devices on the market today, it is not surprising that the current market research indicates that the usage of mobile internet is likely to grow massively by the year 2015 with the estimated increase of 16% from the year 2010. With such an increase, the use of mobile internet will surpass that of the desktop users. This greatly affects the policies on web designing.

With the change on how people consume online information and their viewing of websites, comes the challenge on how to cope with the people’s interest and how to make their online experience more interesting and productive. This implicates that web designers need come up with new techniques on how we engage the users, providing them with the best online experience for the different brands and services. This new technology that is now incorporated in all new websites is know as Responsive Web Design.

What is Responsive Web Design

First we need to know what responsive web design is. Responsive web design is a collection of techniques that allow a website to flex and adapt to the size of screen its being viewed on. This enables the person opening your site on a small smartphone to be able to be shown the same information as the person opening it on their laptop but the site will have noticed the constraints and automatically reformatted to give the user an experience better suited to their device.

This brings to an end the loading of huge website and having to zoom in and out to find the content you are looking for. Responsive web design takes into account the interaction too and makes your site easier to use by acknowledging and integrating things like touch screens to aid navigate on

It is clear that as web continues to evolve it is becoming ever more clear that the main driver to a website is not the fancy-pants eye candy, but the solid, valuable and shareable content. Responsive design explores the implications of limited screen real estate and ease of access not only for structure but forces us to consider our messaging and content on site by adopting a mobile first strategy.

Previously designers first made the desktop version and the mobile version was either a far too minimal functional experience or too much information from the desktop version was forced to the mobile version. Deciding what was most important to a viewer on a mobile device with limited bandwidth, processing power and screen size made designers get rid of anything diluting the main purpose or message and therefore the major obligation of a responsive web design is to ensure that the message offered is concise to guarantee a better experience to the customers.

Benefits of Responsive Web Design

Better, Faster, Smarter User Experience:– Optimizing a site, no matter what the users chooses to view it on makes their life easier. Happier customers lead to a growing business.

Cost Effective:– Responsive sites take a little longer to put together, but they are able to survive longer and the unified approach means management, support and upgrades only need be applied to one place.

SEO Optimized:– Managing SEO for separate mobile and desktop sites is hard and does not produce great results. Google actually recommends a responsive approach to combat these problems and a consolidated view of your results means more focus.

Future Proofing:– Responsive sites work well across the multitude of existing devices on the market. It is safe to say that responsive web design will be around for a considerable time to come.

Improve Conversion Rates:– An optimized and consistent site, no matter what platform it is viewed on provides a better experience for the user, which is more likely to lead to them engaging with you than going elsewhere.