A good and well-designed website can help anyone with a website capture their target audience with ease. A well-ordered website can help significantly with lead generation for your business. This is the reason why large companies like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft, spend millions of dollars in R&D to make sure the site is converting these leads into revenue. A bad website, on the other hand, can cost you potential traffic, which might result in potential losses.
What is responsive design?
Responsive website design refers to how well your website responds or adapts to the browser or device that it is being viewed on. A website that does not respond to the width of the browser or device it is being viewed on is not a responsive website.
Responsive websites look great on all devices and browsers.
Why is responsive design so important?
There was a period of time in the not-so-distant past when the only means of accessing the internet was through a laptop or desktop computer. Developers in those days only had to worry about one or two screens since most screen sizes were just about the same.
Move forward in time a few years, and we are now accessing the internet on our phones and tablets. These devices are of different sizes and widths. With more and more people owning or having access to these mobile devices, having a non-responsive site is really detrimental to your business.
A non-responsive site would not look great on mobile devices. These sites would also be very difficult and uncomfortable to navigate. Since there are more people accessing the internet on their mobile devices, you are bound to lose if you decide to go with a non-responsive website. This is because users of the site may not return due to how difficult it is to use your site.
Why should you use a responsive website design?
There are two very important reasons why you should use a responsive website design. There are other reasons why you should use a responsive design but these two points are the most important, especially if you want to transact business with it.
Mobile internet traffic keeps increasing
There are more mobile devices now than PCs and laptops. Mobile devices consist mainly of mobile phones, tablets, iPods, and smartwatches, among others.
In quarter one of 2015, mobile internet traffic was estimated to be 31.16% and this figure has risen significantly since then. As of the third quarter of 2017, the figure now stands at 52.99% of all internet traffic.
To put this percentage into a much bigger perspective, as of the same time in 2016 (quarter 3 of 2016), mobile internet traffic from mobile devices was at 44.69%. This is more than a 7% increase in the space of one year.
This means that out of all the internet traffic generated by the third quarter of 2017, almost 53% of that traffic was generated by mobile devices. This also means that fewer people are visiting websites with desktops and laptops.
Having a responsive website is no longer a luxury or option but a real necessity if own or want to own a website.
Website looks clean and well-ordered on mobile devices
Clean and professional looking websites are able to generate a significant number of leads. This is because visitors are able to find the things they are looking for without much fuss and confusion. There are exceptions to this, however, as there are some sites that are popular even though they look messy. Even those types of sites are mobile-responsive, which means that although they may look messy and disordered, they will be optimized for mobile devices.
If a visitor to your site keeps pinching and zooming-in to see and use your site, chances are that they may never return.
Having a responsive website design used to be an option or luxury for many website owners. This is no longer the case since more website traffic is generated now by mobile devices. If your site does not use a responsive design, then just know that you are losing out on potential long-term clients and users. If you do not have the skill to do this job, you could always find a web developer to do it for you.