Imagine that you’ve posted a billboard in a local city, advertising your renter’s insurance coverage in a very prominent area of downtown. Coincidentally, a young man named Greg just moved here from another state and just so happens to need the aforementioned coverage.
While riding the bus one weekday afternoon, Greg noticed your advertisement and decided to research your insurance agency, in hopes of acquiring a policy for his new apartment. Greg’s a busy guy and like many of us, doesn’t have any free time during the week, so he needs instant gratification when dealing with all the necessities of life.
As he attempts to pull up your website on his smart phone, he sees a blank page and loading icon spinning… 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds… You’ve lost him. He closes out the tab that was supposed to guide him to a new policy to cover his apartment, and money that could have been given to your business, disappeared. It happens all too often.
But it doesn’t have to…
The site never loaded because, by default, smart phones and tablets will load full websites meant for desktops unless other versions have been built. Even with Wi-Fi, this can be very cumbersome because desktop sized websites often utilize a lot of imagery and are large in size, making it slow and difficult to navigate on smaller screens. Most mobile device users also don’t have an unlimited data plans, so forcing them to load websites with imagery and features they don’t need is actually going to cost them money.
Responsive Web Design rectifies problems like these by automatically recognizing a viewer’s device and delivering up the most relevant version of your website to that device, based on the amount of viewable real estate (screen size).
We’re now in an age where providing the best user experience for viewers is a necessity at all times. It’s estimated that 1.2 BILLION smart phones and tablets are going to be bought worldwide in 2013. Having the desire to offer up better user experience for devices other than a desktop is no longer optional. More of your clients and leads are going to come from smaller, more portable devices, and this is where Responsive Web Design (RWD) shines through.
Because user behavior changes from device to device, we only have a few seconds to acquire a viewer’s attention before they leave. We don’t want them to have to zoom and scroll from side to side. We want them to be able to quickly find the information they’re looking for.
The glory of responsive web design is that it’s all done automatically without prompting the user to take any action, which saves everybody time. As an insurance business, you’ll be more likely to provide the proper information quicker, and acquire leads through effective use of responsive web design.