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Having a responsive website will enable you to give your visitors the best experience possible, from any device they choose to access it from. Its core purpose is to optimise the viewing and interaction experience of your site.
Over the years, web browsing habits have altered with the introduction of various web connected devices.
No longer are we tied to a PC or laptop computer if we want to browse, research, or shop online. We now have powerful personal web connected devices in our pockets.
Whilst tablets have made a little notch in internet usage stats, it is mobile that has completely changed the landscape.
Way back in 2016, Mobile internet usage surpassed Desktop usage worldwide for the first time. It has continued its growth ever since and sits at around 50% worldwide today.
With the growth in mobile internet usage after the introduction of smart phones and tablets, web publishers had to make changes.
Websites were traditionally designed to be viewed on desktop and laptop screens. This did not lend itself to the smaller, vertically aligned screens on mobile devices. Using a desktop website on an older smartphone was an ordeal.
Initially, to provide mobile visitors with a usable website, many businesses created separate mobile websites. These were usually m. versions of websites that sat on a sub domain, and mobile traffic was redirected to this version of the website.
These mobile sites were usually heavily stripped down versions of the desktop website. They didn’t really offer an equal user experience. Users would often still need to visit a site on a desktop device to achieve certain goals.
In 2016 Google began introducing mobile-first indexing. Alongside this, they introduced mobile usability as an important page experience signal for ranking. This focus on mobile user experience has continued with Core Web Vitals rolling out to mobile first.
With the continued rise in the number of hand-held devices purchased every year, it’s now more important than ever that your website is accessible on as many devices as possible.
Simply put, responsive is optimising your website for a wide variety of devices that can access your website. Primarily mobiles, tablets, laptops, desktops, and in some cases TVs.
Having a responsive website will enable you to give visitors the best possible experience, from whatever device they access it from.
Its core purpose is to optimise the viewing and interaction experience of your site. This includes improving ability to read, navigate, and decrease or even irradiate the need for panning or zooming on a device.
With the continued rise of people using their hand-held devices, this means that the amount of traffic to websites originating from mobile devices is increasing every day. This is also the case for other handheld devices such as tablets.
As this number increases, and people become more and more familiar with using these devices, it’s apparent that your website will need to work on these devices. To enable them to have the same experience they would get on any laptop or desktop too.
Another extremely important reason to have a responsive website, is that it can help improve the ranking of your website on Google when a search is made from a mobile device. This quote was taken from a blog post from Google earlier this year;
“Today’s the day we begin globally rolling out our mobile-friendly update. We’re boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results. Now searchers can more easily find high-quality and relevant results. Where text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.“
The following points were taken from another one of their blog posts, posted towards the end of 2014. These are factors that help Google tell if your site is mobile friendly:
As you can see, Google have made it quite clear that they will boost the ranking of mobile friendly websites.
As the number of people using different browsing devices on a daily basis rises, the need for responsive websites is also rising.
If you’ve got project that you’d like to work with us on, let’s get the ball rolling by booking a call or meet up.
