As many agencies are noticing recently, thanks especially to the latest Google update, being mobile-friendly is becoming increasingly important in today’s online age. At the forefront of this change is the transition to responsive websites. Having a responsive site is key if you want your agency to continue to be successful in selling to a younger generation.
That’s great, but what is responsive design?
Responsive design is the technique for tailoring your website’s layout by adapting sections of your site to work fluidly for any user. This means that your site can reposition itself so that no matter what device (desktop, tablet, cell phone, etc.) your customers are using, it will load and appear correctly to them.
In the past, many sites had a specific mobile site that would load on a device. These sites typically had URLs like mobile.youragency.com and would redirect a potential customer if they viewed your site on their phone. The main issue with these sites was that they often were not very pretty and were lacking much of the information a user was looking to find.
Today’s websites take a different approach to this by using responsive design. On their home desktop computer, a user will get the full website experience, complete with large page layouts, possibly a colorful slider, or maybe even an interactive map to see where you are located. When the user decides to look at your site on the go, their experience will be more suited to them at that moment.
All the information that they saw when they were at home is still there and easily accessible, but the rest has been tweaked a bit. The slider might have gotten smaller or even disappeared, while the phone number and address have now become more prominent. Those areas could also be interactive on a mobile device, giving them one-click access to call you directly or have directions to your office right away.
If all my information is still there, does my site actually need to be responsive?
Take a look at the Zywave website on a phone. You will see one version fully responsive while the other is loading the desktop version:
It may not seem to appear bad right now. All you have to do is zoom in to see what you need, right?
Well, now, that does not work as well. By taking the responsive route, you can be sure you are making a mobile user’s experience just as successful to find what they need.
46% of consumers do not return to a web page if it did not load properly on their mobile device. With mobile devices gathering almost 30% of all online traffic, which is a number growing every day, it’s not worth taking the risk of losing all those prospective customers. So far in 2015, Zywave clients have seen over 25% of their website traffic come from mobile devices (including tablets).
How do I make sure my website is responsive?
There are two ways to go about making your site responsive. Converting your current website to be a responsive design isn’t always an easy task. The site most likely was not designed and built in a way to be adapted easily to a mobile layout. This could involve months of work, working with developers, trying to decide what should take up the whole page, or wondering why your staff member’s headshots are suddenly overlapping each other. Unless your website was designed and built by a designer who kept responsiveness in mind, you will likely need to start fresh with a new design and website build.
Fortunately, there is an easy way to get a responsive website that will work across all of the devices your customers and prospects utilize. If you want to guarantee your site is responsive, well designed, and always getting the latest updates, look no further than Zywave! Is your website responsive? How are your customers responding to using your website on mobile devices? Leave your feedback in the comments!