Is your website in danger of dropping off the search engine results pages?

Google launched an update last year stating that they were going to start to favour websites which were mobile friendly. According to Moz.com, the number of mobile-friendly web pages in mobile search results increased by two percentage points (from 70% to 72%) after the original update rolled out.

Responsive Web Design can also improve SEO (search engine optimisation) and increase conversion rates. Local search is becoming increasingly popular (on mobile phones) so having a responsive website will increase the ability of your website to be found by local users.

Responsive Web Design (RWD) is simply an approach of laying-out and coding a website so that the website provides an optimal viewing experience, ease of reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling across a wide range of devices (including desktop computer monitors, tablets and mobile phones).

Having a responsive site can benefit you in a few ways:

Google Factor:

Google recommends a responsive approach for SEO. Managing the SEO for multiple mobile and desktop sites can be difficult and has been proven to be less effective compared to a responsive site. Responsive sites avoid duplicate content. Webmasters who create mobile versions of their website usually just duplicate the content from the main website. By doing so, this immediately removes all the credibility of the mobile site from an SEO perspective.

Note from MD: There are also whisperings from Google that they will be creating a mobile only search engine for mobile devices which will have a massive effect on non-mobile friendly businesses.

Better, faster, smarter user experience:

Putting your customer first is key and ensuring that their experience on your site is the best it can possibly be. Having a responsive and mobile friendly site means that the user can enjoy the site to its full potential regardless of what device they're using to view it on.

Cost effective:

Even though initially responsive sites take a little longer to put together, they survive a lot longer and future management, support and upgrades only need to be applied to one place which saves time and money.

Improve conversion rates:

An optimised and consistent site, no matter what platform it’s viewed on, provides a better experience for the user which is more likely to lead to them engaging with you.

If you want to see some of our recently launched responsive sites please visit our portfolio. 

If you think it's time you finally made the change to your website, please contact us!