The recent increase of smartphones and tablets has changed the concepts of design and user experience for good. Before the outburst of mobile began, web designers mainly had to focus on one major challenge- compatibility with multiple browsers. However, exploring websites across different devices such as smartphones and tablets is indeed a different ball game. Designers need to consider several factors such as screen size, resolution and support for mobile flash while developing websites based on the principle of responsive web design.
So, why responsive web design matters for your website? Here are some important reasons for this tricky question.
No need to maintain different pages for different platforms
Responsive design doesn’t require you to set up different pages for different devices. Almost every user these days would prefer a mobile version of their websites, so would you start designing one for blackberry users? Another for laptop users and may be in a couple of years you will have to design for a number of additional new devices. It’s really difficult to keep with the endless new resolutions and devices. Sometimes you may forget considering some resolutions or devices and design for the ones you can. You are more likely to lose traffic and customers from such mistakes. This is where responsive design comes in.
Respond to user’s environment
Responsive designs neatly respond to a user’s environment. No matter the device your user has, make sure to offer a better experience to them. Although smartphones are equipped with features that help to zoom and browse, navigation and clarity may not be good. You may come across such problems while filling out forms or trying to shop through an online store. You may become frustrated by the clumsy process and may end up with increase in bounce rates. Since all these devices mainly differ in their screen resolutions, responsive designs are compatible across all widths on which they are being viewed.
Less cost and time
Designers are under the wrong assumption that using a responsive web design is an expensive activity. Though the design startup requires some investment, several instances suggest that the cost gets balanced by the savings earned on multiplying the design efforts for multiple platforms. Also, large themes needs more time to extract all additional files and of course even a few seconds add up. The end user may finally get frustrated from waiting as such site is inefficient in loading those files. This increases the loading time of your page and thus has a bad impact on your bounce rate, search engine rankings and income. Moreover, using responsive web design makes your website survive for a long time.
Improves SEO
Instead of getting backlinks and traffic to each and every site, responsive web design encourages you to focus all your SEO efforts in one place which means all link juice is directed to the same domain with no site-slowing effects.
Google too recommends responsive design, so you can bet that it improves SEO. Plus, any backlinks that you gain are directed to one domain and that way your sites have better rankings on search engine results.
Publish content only once
Maintaining a website can be hard enough at times, but what would happen if you have multiple websites or apps for different platforms? It becomes even more time consuming. As responsive designs rely on a single site with different layouts, the maintenance of your domain is streamlined. This means you need to publish your post once so you do not worry about duplicate post and search engine penalty. It’s easy to update your post once and the change will reflect across all devices instantly and offers better ROI.
Available to every visitor
With responsive design you website can be accessed by every visitor no matter the device they are using. You may lose a considerable amount of traffic if your website does not support different platforms, but with responsive design you can avoid this and reach a large audience.
Responsive web design when implemented the right way, outweighs the disadvantages and if you are working towards designing a new website it is something that you should not ignore.
