Responsive Website Design Is Essential

March 6, 2015

In the past few years a major shift towards mobile web browsing has occurred:

• 60% of Internet Access Is From Mobile Devices.
• 34% of smartphone users go online mostly using their phones, and not on a desktop, laptop, or other device.
• People searching online using a smartphone will increase from 800 million to 1.9 billion users in 2015.
• 46% of people using mobile devices report having problems viewing a static site.
• 44% of people surveyed claim that navigation was difficult on smaller devices.

This conversion to mobile devices has made responsive design an essential part of any website. That’s because responsive web design is the method of building websites that have the ability to respond to the user's device. For example, opening a responsive site on a computer monitor you see large photos with animated text, but if you opened the same exact site on your mobile device, you would then see a static graphic along with easy to find contact details.

Tremendously Flexible

To understand responsive design we can take an example of liquid, how liquid takes the shape of a container and fills in. A liquid fills the allotted space with no difficulty. The same way, responsive web design acts like a fluid and fits in the screen resolution of device which is being used to access it.

Mobile Users Are increasing

The most important and strongest reason for the responsive design is the numbers of mobile users that are increasing each day. The statistics at the top of this post show a clear trend. Additionally, Google reports that that 20% are performed via mobile device. Which is why their most recent search algorithm update was completely focused on the mobile experience. This year, smartphone web browsing will overcome the usage of desktop computers.

Google says Be-Responsive

The big G Google recommends basing your website on a responsive design. When there are two different versions of a website, one for mobile devices and the other one for desktop computer both have different HTML and URL. While having a responsive design just leaves you with one HTML page and one URL. It becomes easy for Google to crawl through your website once, organize all the data and content present there for better search rankings.

Manage comfortably

Having just one website makes it easier to manage; on the other hand, looking after multiple sites at once is a difficult task. With responsive design you manage content all at once and it applies to all the versions of your website, you do SEO and it is implemented on all the versions of your website. This comfort in managing website is a great advantage that leads to application of responsive web design.

Cost Effective

Having one website that can be viewed on any device of the world is a method of saving your money and lowering your cost. If you have a different version for mobile and for desktop computer you pay more. Creating mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Windows not only takes a lot of time, but also a lot of money - a responsive website eliminates the need to develop an app for your company.

Sources: Pew Research Center, visual.ly