Not long ago you would be able to design a website with reasonable certainty what size it needed to be. Technology was limited, they’re weren’t as many devices and there was a definitive range of computer monitor sizes. This meant you could design your website with a fixed width and fix all of its elements in their places – job done!
As my info graphic above displays – times have changes. Now there are seemingly infinite devices to browse the web on; laptops, desktops, tablets, notebooks, smartphones, smart watches, etc. Not only are there multiple devices but also multiple browsers on those devices – google chorome, IE, firefox, safari, etc. Smartphones are the most popular device for getting online, closely followed by tablets and laptops so to reach your audience your site HAS to be mobile friendly!
Users are easily put off by non user-friendly websites, and a site designed for a large monitor which is forced to squeeze onto a smaller screen definitely fits the bill here. Responsive websites are designed to respond to the device the person is using. Images, text, menus, contact forms and other items would be scaled and re-arranged according to the viewing device. You can also optimise images to load faster on mobile devices. This responsive nature will make your website look great and load fast across all devices, making it much more user friendly. Google also takes into account how responsive your website is when optimising for search engine – meaning it now effects your google ranking.
You could build a separate mobile website but a single responsive website has a lot of plus points:
- Users can share and link to your content with a single URL
- The maintainence is cheaper and easier as you only have to manage one site
- Load is slower because mobile sites require the users browser to redirect depending on their device.
- You only have to manage SEO for one site.
Is your website responsive?
If you already have a website and want to check if it is responsive, take a look at Google’s Mobile Friendly Test tool. If it isn’t and you would like some advice or assistance with changing to a responsive site please contact me.