Most businesses are aware of the importance of clean, attractive, and modern website design. However, a new school of thought has taken over due to changes in algorithms of search engines like Google: responsive design. Whether you’re familiar with the term or it’s the first time you’ve heard of it, you may be wondering what exactly it is and how it affects your business. 

Responsive design can help you address numerous problems on your website, making it present better on mobile, improving how it looks on various devices of different screen sizes and lengthening the amount of time visitors spend on it. Here’s what you need to know about responsive design and how it helps improve your visibility:

All About Responsive Design

Responsive design is a method of designing your website so that it instantly adjusts and scales its content to correspond to the screen size the person is viewing it on, ensuring everything presents properly. Nothing should jut out awkwardly or get cut off. It prevents images from being overblown and taking up most of the screen’s real estate and makes it as easy as possible for your visitors to read your content.

The objective of responsive design is to avoid the extra work needed to resize, scroll, pan, or zoom on websites that haven’t been optimised for devices other than computers or laptops. It is usually challenging to navigate these kinds of websites, and it may even cost you sales opportunities as potential customers become frustrated with trying to browse your site.

Another perk of responsive design is that it eliminates the need to create a separate mobile website for smartphone or tablet users. Instead of getting a website design agency to design multiple websites for various screen sizes, you’ll have one website that scales up and down accordingly. 

The Importance of Investing in Responsive Design

Society is no longer bound by one primary device. Due to the sheer power of today’s smartphones, people use various devices to access the Internet, so it’s even more crucial than ever to ensure your site is perfectly viewable on whatever gadget your visitor uses.

It’s best to create a responsive website compatible with desktop and mobile screens, as the number of mobile viewers is rapidly soaring, slowly outnumbering desktop users. Smartphones are becoming more accessible than ever, which means a large portion of your audience will eventually use one to browse your website.

Furthermore, Google announced in 2015 that it would add mobile-friendliness as a factor in its many search engine algorithms. Websites that weren’t optimised for mobile then lost some momentum in their rankings since they failed to deliver a seamless experience for mobile searchers and viewers. 

The Benefits of Responsive Design

Choosing a responsive design for your website yields different benefits for your business. It enhances user experience, improves your search engine optimisation efforts, adds more flexibility, and is overall cost-effective.

Maintaining multiple sites for your mobile and non-mobile audiences is costly, especially if you’re a small business trying to minimise costs while gaining momentum. Responsive design helps you save time and money by eliminating the need to keep a separate site for mobile. That way, you can funnel your resources into one site design that appeals to all visitors and devices.

A website built with responsive design in mind enables you to make instant changes. You won’t have to reflect these updates on two different websites, which is convenient for when you want to implement a quick typo correction or a design fix. 

Lastly, responsive design vastly improves the user experience on your website. The goal is to get people to enjoy browsing your website and have an easy time looking for the information they need. However, if your website takes far too long to load or your photos have the incorrect resolution, your business will appear unprofessional, costing you potential customers.

Conclusion

Responsive design allows you to streamline your website, make it more presentable, and vastly improve your chances of ranking on the first page in one fell swoop. By prioritising responsive design, your visitors will spend more time on your website, improving their chances of converting.

Studio Lore is a design studio in Melbourne that can cater to your website needs, whether you need affordable SEO, website design, or content creation to tell your story. Contact us today to find out more about what we can do for your business!