Responsive web design – your questions answered 😉
Many of my clients ask what is responsive web design. They hear from their friends or other professionals that their website must be mobile-friendly, responsive, Google registered, and many other things.
It’s easy at that point to feel overwhelmed and confused. Then we can add other “fancy” words like positioning, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and a typical person that has a dream of starting a business and really wants to move forward, open a company, and start a website design process that feels lost and annoyed. Not surprising at all!
On top of all that if you are motivated and met a few web designers you realize they add even more words to the mix to sound more professional and knowledgeable. With that – You – are more confused and often postpone the process as the process seems intimidating, there are too many options, decisions, and ways to fail.
And web design is only one aspect of starting your business – there are so many other things you need to think of, organize, purchase, learn, and figure out a way to support yourself and your family.
To make your life a bit easier I will explain the big soup of words like mobile-friendly or responsive web design.
As you surely know most of the phones on the market are “smartphones” – those that you can access the internet from and check out websites. Here is the first hint. Yes. The website is mobile-friendly if you can access it on your phone, and you can read it with no problem. (I am sure you have accessed many websites when you had to scroll left and right to see the full image or a sentence, or the image was cut off, or worse… on the tiny phone screen you saw the whole website and needed to zoom in and out like crazy to look through. This is definitely not a mobile-friendly website design).
So what is responsive web design?
Responsive web design and mobile-friendly website design could be used interchangeably. If you read into details you can find additional definitions but this is the simplest way to put it. It’s a website that is easy to use on all devices with screen and layout slightly changing pending if you are checking it on your phone, iPad, or desktop computer.
The good thing – a great designer will help you with all aspects of making sure your website can be visible and will format correctly. They will also help you with adding analytics, submitting your site to Google, and other search engines, and adding SEO. All of those help you with positioning – which is being visible on Google, as high as possible.
To find out more about responsive web design and how Kredo Design can help you navigate through the process of designing your website – schedule your free Discovery Call with Angie Godlewska
Why is responsive web design important?
Well here is a perfect example – it doesn’t load properly on your phone, and you need to scroll forever sideways or can’t click items properly.
Not a mobile-friendly design
Reason #1
Let’s be honest – 87% of phones in America are used to search the internet. As of today, about 56% of organic searches to websites are mobile. Do you want to stand out from the competition and be on top of the Google list? I am sure you are.
If your website is hard to read on the phone it will scare away 56% of your customers. This is a very significant number.
In those examples you can see how hard it is to read and find what you are looking for:
Reason #2
Here is the truth – Google prefers it. And by “prefer” I mean Google ranks sites that are not mobile lower. Considering you want to have a successful business, you do want to rank higher and be visible to your customers, you have to follow some rules. Yes, the algorithm includes “mobile-first”, SSL certificate, social proof, and a couple of other factors, regardless you want Google to like you. Especially as 93% of internet search is done through said Google.
Reason #3
People. Yes, I said People. Most of us, before doing a larger purchase or hiring someone search the internet. Based on that research we either pick a different contractor, buy a different product, change our mind, or…. decide to trust the company based on their overall look, testimonials, ranking in google, etc. I do it all the time.
Do you need help creating a mobile-friendly website?
Contact Kredo Design for help with branding and responsive web design!
This has been an incredibly wonderful article. Thanks for providing this information. Georgia