Is your website ready to respond?

Table of Contents

It wasn’t really that long ago when all websites were desktop. Browsing the Internet was simple; just drag out your huge machine and get surfing.

Smartphones and tablets changed all that. Nowadays, the majority of surfing is done on a mobile device and a good, solid website that aims to be a source of information to its user needs to be responsive in order to compete.

Is your website ready to respond?

(The A to E of what you need to know)

Aesthetics

“Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgement are permanent.”
Roger Scruton

Have you ever visited a site that has glared back at you in vivid, clashing colours and you bounced back out of it straightaway? Sure you have. A website needs to be aesthetically pleasing for the user to stay on and explore. The same applies to mobile browsing. If a user is visiting you from a Smartphone or tablet and your site is not responsive, the appearance is very favorable to the user. The desktop site is squashed into a much smaller screen, causing the text to be too small and the visual content displayed incorrectly.

Below is an example of the way a mobile responsive looks compared to a non-responsive website

Membership web design by melt

Bounce rate

“There are a number of factors that contribute to your bounce rate. For example, visitors might leave your site from the entrance page if there are site design or usability issues”
Google

The bounce rate of your website should always be taken into consideration; it is a good indicator of how your site is working for you. Sites that aren’t responsive will generate a high bounce rate from mobile traffic as they aren’t designed with smaller screens in mind. Over 50% of Internet users now browse the Internet on either a Smartphone or tablet, so sites that aren’t tailored towards these users will start to witness a drop-off in traffic.

Content

“Maintaining a single shared site preserves a canonical URL, avoiding any complicated redirects, and simplifies the sharing of web addresses”
Google

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If you are a business that relies heavily on shareable content, a responsive site is a must. The reason for this is that a responsive site shares the same URL as the desktop site, rather than have a different URL when it is a mobile site (with an m domain). When people share from a mobile phone and it is accessed from a desktop, it opens the same if the site is responsive and vice versa. Content doesn’t open the same if it is from a mobile site to a desktop user.

A responsive site also means you are also only uploading content once to one site, rather than twice in another separate mobile solely for mobile.

Digital user experience

“There are three responses to a piece of design – yes, no and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for”
Milton Glaser

Ask any marketer what the most important aspect of a website is and they will say the digital user experience. Having a solid website that is content-rich, pleasing to browse and easy to navigate make up the user experience. Ultimately, it is this that will determine whether or not they are likely to return. A user decides within three seconds whether to stay on the site or leave. These three seconds are crucial to your online marketing as this is the timeframe you have to engage and interest your visitors. Bearing in mind that around half of your traffic is probably mobile, it is important to prioritise the user experience for your mobile traffic as well as desktop.

Ease of use

“Clutter is a failure of design, not an attribute of information”
Edward Tufte

Probably the most important thing to remember when considering upgrading your site to a responsive one is how easy it will be to navigate for the mobile user. Sites that are desktop and accessed by a Smartphone or tablet are not easy to use. They are complicated, cluttered and can be frustrating to explore. If your competitors have a mobile site which is easy to use and you don’t, your target markets could easily end up there.

The use of mobile devices has grown exponentially as the majority of people now use them for everyday things. According to Statista, 5 billion people will be using mobile phones by 2017 and 67% of mobile users say they are more likely to buy from mobile friendly sites so the question remains for business owners: Is your site ready to respond?

If you’d like to find out more about making your website mobile responsive drop me an email and I’ll be happy to send you more info

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