Back to blog

Why a Responsive Website is Important

You may or may not have heard of the term “responsive website”, however now more than ever the need for one is vital. If your website is not yet responsive then it will not be easily viewable by over 38 million smart phone users in the UK, and this could be losing you customers.

What is a Responsive Website?

A responsive website, or “mobile friendly” website, is one that responds and resizes automatically to the size of the screen on the device on which it is being viewed.

This means that the person who is viewing the website does not need to constantly “pinch” and “scroll” left and right in order to be able to view the content. Consequently, visitors are far more likely to stay longer on responsive websites.

See How Responsive Websites Work

Google Ranking for Mobile websites

Apart from the obvious benefits of keeping visitors on your website longer, your website will then also follow the recommendations set down by Google. Google have also been using “mobile first indexing” for a few months now, which means for searches done on a mobile device, mobile websites will be prioritised, so if your website is responsive it stands a better chance of ranking higher than that of your competitor with a non-responsive website.

Use of Mobile Devices

The use of mobile devices such as phones and tablets for web browsing has grown steadily since 2009, whilst the desktops share decreased. In October 2016 the two crossed, and now more searches of websites are done on mobile devices.

For this reason alone, it is important that your website is able to be viewed easily on a mobile device, as there are now a significant amount of people who could potentially visit your website on their smartphone or tablet.

According to Google:

60%* of people won’t stay on your site if it’s not mobile-friendly

67%* of people are more likely to buy a product or use a service from a website that is mobile friendly

This is why Google ranks mobile-friendly websites above non-mobile friendly websites.

Responsive Web Design Vs Mobile Sites

When websites first started being viewed online, some companies decided to get a separate mobile version of their website in order to overcome the issues that only having a desktop site presented.

However upgrading to a responsive only website means there will now only be one version of the website to maintain, as opposed to having a separate mobile version. Hence as well as being less time-consuming, it will also be more cost effective. Additionally, SEO campaigns are easier to manage.