Role of Responsive Website Design in 2015 and Beyond
Why Everyone Keeps Talking About Responsive Website Design
These days, web surfing has expanded to smartphones and tablets and according to various surveys global internet usage on mobile has exceeded the traffic generated from desktop platforms. Due to this fact, new websites have designed as a mobile-friendly, multiple-device compatible to accommodate this new digital landscape. Also, many old websites have redesigned themselves to become more visible in the new mobile internet world. Even though there are websites that are still unaware about this development and this article may help them about the role of responsive website design in 2015 and in the near future.
More than Just a Mobile Website
For your information, responsive design is a web development approach which makes use of flexible images, fluid, proportion-based grids, and CSS3 media queries to deliver an optimized user experience across all platforms. This type of design approach has more benefits for most businesses than simply having a separate mobile website. The responsive design enables your site to fully adjust to all platforms, and it seamlessly caters to target mobile-sized screens and resolutions by a single set of content and code. And unlike a mobile website, a responsive website provides the complete, informative web experience that today’s users expect from a business organization.
Low Bounce Rate and Loading Time
Users will leave your site if the site does not work properly on smartphones and tablets and the bounce rate will be high. If your site’s high bounce rate is detected by Google, the search engine will give your site a low quality score and therefore rank your site lower in its search results, thereby decreasing your website visitor traffic. A responsive design helps to minimize the bounce rate as the view of your site is adapted and consistent with every device. Also, a responsive design does not use queries to redirect users to another URL such as a mobile-only website does, so this minimizes the load time of a page which can also increase your website’s SEO ranking.
Tracking without Effort
It will be hard for your marketing team to do their job when you have several versions of your website. It will be difficult for your online marketing team to evaluate your site and make educated and accurate business decisions. However, having a single and responsive website affords you the option to track site visitors and traffic based on the clicks received without having the data divided among a number of website versions. This will give you a more accurate representation of goal conversions, amount of visits, source of visits and more.
Cost-effective and Efficient
If you want a new website or redesign your old site, you might have noticed that building a fully-fledged responsive website may cost more up front than building a desktop-only website or a separate mobile website. However, a responsive website will save you money in the long run. As building a responsive website involves separate design templates for each device or browser size, there is one single set of files and one set of content. This means that future content updates can be done in one place, cutting down on maintenance time and filtering out version control problems.
Compatible to CMS
You need to check whether the content management system (CMS) you about to use for your website project does support responsive design. Many of the popular CMS platforms such as Sitecore, Kentico, Sitefinity and other have inbuilt features that are compatible with a responsive design. This will allow for more cost-effective, responsive website development, but also enable future template development and website changes to work seamlessly across devices.
Highly Flexible
Responsive web design implements a forward thinking strategy that is flexible enough to adapt to future computing devices. When it comes to mobile-only websites, this is a major drawback. With a responsive site, when new devices (wearable devices such as Google Glass, Moto 360 and Apple Watch) are continually introduced, your website will be as future-proof as it can be.
So, next time somebody asks you about how to build a good website that is fully compatible across all devices, recommend them about the benefits of choosing responsive web design approach.
