Over the past few years, there’s been a significant increase in the usage of mobile and tablet devices. According to the Pew Internet Project’s research, in the United States alone 64% of people now own a Smartphone of some kind, out of which 67% continuously check their phones for calls, alerts or messages. No matter what these statistics say, the rapid climb in mobile users makes one thing clear: if you want to target your audience in the right way, you must have a responsive website.
With the release of Google’s latest mobile-friendly algorithm update, unofficially dubbed “Mobilegeddon”, it has become absolutely clear that “mobile-usability” would now be considered as a key factor when ranking a website in mobile search results.
This is the first time when the search engine giant officially confirmed that sites having mobile-friendly design will get a significant boost in mobile search rankings.
However, in the past, Google has updated its search algorithm several times to deliver users the best searching experience possible on Smartphone devices and help developers build websites that are viewable on all modern devices. But this time, Google is extremely serious regarding the implementation of mobile-friendly design in websites.
According to Google, following three configurations can be used to make a website mobile-friendly:
- Responsive Web Design: Serves the same HTML code across all devices with a single URL.
- Dynamic Serving: Dynamically serves device-specific HTML while using the same URL across all devices.
- Separate URLs: Serves different code to different devices while having a separate URL for mobile-optimized view.
Out of these three methods, Responsive Design is Google’s recommended design approach since it fully complies with their guidelines of device-optimized content and a clean, crawlable link structure.
For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of responsive web design (RWD), it refers to crafting a website in such a way that it will automatically adapt to the device, screen size or resolution on which it’s being presented. Having a single HTML code and single URL across all devices, not only responsive design helps site owners save their lot of time and money but also makes it easy for search engines to crawl and index the content of a website.
According to a recent research done by the Aberdeen Group, websites designed with responsive web design approach have 8% higher (10.9%) conversion rates year-over-year than non-responsive ones (2.7). On the other hand, the popular e-commerce store O’Neill Clothing has seen notable results after switching over to responsive design. According to the report, O’Neill got following outcomes after incorporating responsive design in their website:
For Android Devices
- Total Conversions increased by 32%
- Transactions improved by 33%
- Revenue went up by 42%
For iPhone/iPod
- Conversions augmented by 71%
- Transactions jumped up by 50%
- Revenue increased by 25%
Undoubtedly, these statistics have made it clear to you that responsive design has a great impact on transactions, conversions and revenue of any business.
So, if you have a non-responsive WordPress site through which you earn money by selling your products/services or placing advertisements, it’s time to make it responsive if you wish to make more and more money and don’t want to lose your mobile customers/visitors. Below are some points why you should incorporate responsive web design into your WordPress site to skyrocket your business:
Enhanced User Experience
As a website developed with responsive web design (RWD) approach has the flexibility to adapt to any device or screen size, it delivers users a consistent and optimal experience.
Instead of having users zoom or pinch their tiny Smartphone screens, responsive design offers them an easy-to-absorb website which they find more comfortable to browse on mobile than desktop. Strictly speaking, if the experience of a user with your site on mobile is positive, there’s a 70% chance he would make a purchase.
Helps You Reach the Right Audience
According to a recent report by Campaign Monitor, 42% of all email opens occur on mobile devices. This report proves nothing but one thing; whether it’s your website’s landing page or an email that you’re sending out to your subscribers or any other thing, you need to be responsive everywhere.
Otherwise, you may face a lower conversion rate since today’s users spend their most of the time on mobile and tablet devices. In a nutshell, targeting your audience the right way is possible only with responsive web design.
Higher Rankings in Search Engines
As I already mentioned above, Google not only recommends the use of responsive design but also now considers “mobile-usability” as a crucial factor to rank a website in search results.
Responsive design uses a single URL which makes it easy for search engine bots to crawl and index the content of a website with only a single version of code. So just create high-quality content, attract natural authority links, and get your site ranked on the first page of search results with responsive design.
Time and Cost Effective
Before the introduction of responsive web design, if you remember, web developers used to create several versions of a website to target a wide variety of devices. For this, they were needed to invest a considerable amount of time, money and effort.
But the responsive design made the entire process a breeze: you just need a single URL and a single code base for your site, which is relatively easier to maintain. Look, how time and cost effective responsive design technique is!
Improved Conversion and Sales
Responsive design incorporates mobile specific functionalities like click-to-call and GPS route planning, which makes a website more interactive and plays a vital role in keeping the users engaged for a long time.
As a general rule, the longer a user stays on a site, the higher will be its conversion rate. With responsive design, your customers are able to make purchases anytime from anywhere using any kind of device.
Means, you would definitely see a significant boost in conversion rates and sales of your website.
Requires Only One SEO Campaign
If you have several versions of your site, you’ll need to run different SEO campaigns (link building and other SEO efforts) for all versions. Whereas in responsive design, you just have a single URL to work for.
As people will be using a single URL to share your content, you also need not to worry about attracting shares for different versions of your site. A single URL makes it much easier to manage social signals. In short, responsive design doesn’t only make any content readable on all devices, but it also allows visitors to share it regardless of what device they’re using.
You’re Safe for the Future
As responsive design is 100% future-proof, you don’t need to build a new website every time a new kind of device is introduced. Instead using CSS media queries, you can easily make your website look stunning and beautiful on that device.
You’ll never need to create any special strategy for the newly introduced device. All you’ll have to simply update your media queries instead of building a new version of site for that specific device.
Final Words
A recent survey conducted by the Google Webmaster team on Google+ revealed that 81% people use responsive design configuration to make their site mobile-friendly.
Needless to say, the World Wide Web is changing too fast and responsive web design is something that you must take seriously. So go responsive and then, the ball would definitely be in your court!
Author Bio:
Ajeet is a senior web developer at WordPressIntegration – PSD to Responsive WordPress Coders -where he writes custom JavaScript code for WordPress themes. In his spare time, he writes about different topics related to JavaScript, WordPress, and HTML5 to share his work experience with others. You can follow WordPressIntegration on Facebook
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