Why Responsive Web Design is Important

Written by Ethan He

February 1, 2023

Response Web Design

According to the Data Reportal, there are 5.44 billion unique mobile users in the world. 

Mobile phone users increased by 168 million, a 3% increase over the past 12 months. Given the stats above, it’s safe to say that we are now in the age of mobile devices.

Most business today is done on mobile phones. With so many users, it is always important to consider the technical aspects of a responsive web design  from the perspective of smartphone users.

Your website is the first and foremost important aspect of your business. This is the face of your business and is the first interaction point. 

When designing a website, keep in mind that the design should look good on all devices with different viewpoints. 

In this article, you will learn responsive web design and how it can help grow your business.

 

What Is A Responsive Web Design?

Responsive web design is one that is responsive according to the screen size of the device you are using. A flexible and customizable website according to various screen sizes. Whether you are using a mobile device of any size, the website layout should automatically adjust according to the screen size.

The aim is to develop a design that doesn’t require unnecessary scrolling, panning, zooming, or resizing for every different device. Otherwise, navigating these sites can be very difficult.

With responsive websites, you won’t have to worry about creating different website versions for every screen size. A website that is scalable for every screen will be sufficient.

 

Why Responsive Web Design Is Important?

Responsive web design is one that is responsive according to the screen size of the device you are using. A flexible and customizable website according to various screen sizes. Whether you are using a mobile device of any size, the website layout should automatically adjust according to the screen size.

The aim is to develop a design that doesn’t require unnecessary scrolling, panning, zooming, or resizing for every different device. Otherwise, navigating these sites can be very difficult.

With responsive websites, you won’t have to worry about creating different website versions for every screen size. A website that is scalable for every screen will be sufficient and most importantly user friendly.

Responsive web design is one that is responsive according to the screen size of the device you are using. A flexible and customizable website according to various screen sizes. Whether you are using a mobile device of any size, the website layout should automatically adjust according to the screen size.

The aim is to develop a design that doesn’t require unnecessary scrolling, panning, zooming, or resizing for every different device. Otherwise, navigating these sites can be very difficult.

With responsive websites, you won’t have to worry about creating different website versions for every screen size. A website that is scalable for every screen will be sufficient and most importantly user friendly.

1. Google’s Recommendations

On April 21, 2015, Google revealed a new update, known as the mobile-friendly update.

According to this update, mobile-friendliness is now a ranking signal. In fact, Google now focuses crawling your mobile version of your website first rather than the desktop version of your website.

So with that in mind, we all understand by now just how critical mobile-friendliness is to Google’s algorithm.

Over the last few years, since the update has been rolled out many websites have been hit hard in terms of ranking and traffic.

All this because their website wasn’t able to keep up with the trend and optimize for the mobile version.

Going one step further, Google introduced mobile-first indexing.

With this update, Google bases ranking and indexing on the mobile version of a website rather than the desktop version.

Due to these updates, having a responsive web design is more important than ever. This will help your website rank higher in search engine results which will result in more traffic and sales.

 

2. Improved User Experience (UX)

As discussed before, your website is the face of your company. User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) are a crucial part of the success of any business.

UX itself is a broad term, but generally refers to the experience associated with visiting a website.

If people like your website and enjoy the experience they will come back to visit. If not, then you may lose those users for good. Why would they want to come back if your competitor offers a better website?

When someone visits your website on their mobile device and they experience slow loading, distorted layout, and uneven picture placement, you can be sure they will bounce right away and never come back.

Many companies spend a fortune on making their websites ravishing. They pay for expensive web developers, ask customers for their opinions, and conduct different customer satisfaction surveys for their feedback.

All this to make the website pleasing and captivating. What they lack is the most fundamental step. Make it user friendly. No matter how appealing your website is, if it’s not responsive it is destined to fail.

 

3. SEO Benefits

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is being widely utilized by companies to give an online boost to their business presence.

The higher you rank in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), the more potential customers you find.

Being at the top of the SERPs can be the difference between choosing you or your competitors.

As discussed above, websites with responsive web design will rank significantly higher than other websites that are not.

Alongside other SEO factors, responsive web design is now at the top of ranking factors. Many businesses fail because they don’t take into account a large number of mobile users and hence lose potential customers.

Responsive web design is also great because you don’t have to manage different versions of the same website for different devices.

This allows you to focus on a single front rather than multiple. It also reduces operating costs, such as developing different websites and hiring and managing multiple websites compared to a single website.

Therefore, by taking all this into account, it is safe to say that when designing a website, making it responsive should be your foremost priority.

 

4. Cost-Effectiveness

For any company, cost is always one of the most important things to consider. For any business, the top goal is to maximize profitability.

Paying extras for development and maintenance of different versions of the same site can quickly add up and take a toll on the company’s book. When you create a responsive website design, you can eliminate all the extra costs.

With that, extra resources can now be used on more pressing concerns that help the business.

When your website is responsive and appealing to the audience, your bounce rate will be minimized. This will lead to increased profits and higher returns.

 

5. Ease of Management

Most organizations, particularly small businesses, don’t have a the resources to refresh or invigorate their website regularly. Instead of employing a designer to deal with each part of your site, a responsive design permits you to roll out the improvements yourself, rapidly and without any problem.

Furthermore, with only one site, different components of your advertising will also be easier to manage. This will save you from the headache of choosing which versions of your website your campaign needs to focus on.

Similarly, you will not have to worry about your web redirects, whether or not they are going to the correct website.

All in all, a responsive website design makes it easy to manage your website and all its aspects.

 

Conclusion

With so many mobile users and Google bases its SEO ranking on the mobile version of your website, it’s just too important to neglect.

With benefits such as improving user experience, better SEO ranking, cost-effectiveness, and higher conversion rates, it’s a no-brainer that having a responsive web design is a necessity today.

If you need help implementing any of the above suggestions, please contact me! You know I am always happy to help. 

About Ethan He

Ethan is a Full Stack Web Developer and SEO Specialist based in Pittsburgh, PA. In his free time, Ethan enjoys working on various projects involving Ruby, Vue and AWS applications.

Ethan graduated from The Firehose Project coding bootcamp in 2016 with a focus on Ruby on Rail and Computer Software engineering.