For most people, there's so much content but so little time online, making competition tough on the Internet for many businesses. Thus, it isn't enough to just have a website nowadays. To grab attention and sustain it, what you need is a responsive website.
In terms of design, a responsive website is a website built to give users an optimal viewing experience when they visit, regardless of the device they're using for browsing. This means that the text adjust quickly for easier viewing with minimum input from the user.
There are many reasons why implementing a responsive website is a good idea for your business, but here are the top three:
People use different devices to access the web
Gone are the days when folks have to be tethered to a desktop computer just to be able to go online. Now, practically anyone can surf the Internet anywhere using a mobile device. And in just a few years from now, as many as 5 billion people will be using mobile phones as their main device. This is great news for end users, but it poses a challenge to businesses. In order to engage more people online, a website should be designed to accommodate most if not all mobile devices, along with different operating systems and browsers. This is where the concept of responsive web design (RWD) comes in. With RWD, users wouldn't have to scroll up and down or side to side endlessly to get the information they need. The website automatically adjusts to the dimensions of the mobile device used, making navigation much more convenient.
User experience determines the level of engagement
Think back to a time when you left a website right away because the user experience is simply awful. The content may have been amazing, but you wouldn't have known that because you couldn't get past photos taking space of the whole screen and the text disappearing when you scroll . The same thing will happen to users visiting your website if it isn't a responsive website. If the text and photos are fixed on the screen, users will have to adjust to the dimensions, and not the other way around. This leads to a frustrating user experience, causing people to leave and never coming back. To prevent this from happening, your website's design should be fluid. Content, whether it's text or photos or another form of media, should adjust freely across different devices and screen resolutions to make people want to stay and browse.
It's more practical to manage one website than two
It's more practical to manage one website than two -- Of course, you can choose to skip implementing RWD and create two websites instead, one for desktop computers and another for mobile devices. But the cost of maintenance is higher for two websites than it is for one, so why waste time and effort? Also, creating only one website for mobile devices may not be enough considering the various brands of smartphones and tablets out in the market today. What may work for an Android-supported Samsung mobile phone with a Chrome browser may not work for an iOS-based iPad tablet with a Safari browser, and vice versa. Instead of trying to make a website for each possibility, it's better to use a responsive web design and have it adjust to whatever scenario there is. That's less stress for you in the long run.
Mobile devices are here to stay, and it isn't too far off in the future for these gadgets to become main computing devices for majority of people. In fact, it's happening right now: Desktop computers are delegated to perform complicated tasks (like coding, video editing, etc.) because people are using their tables and smartphones for simple online activities like browsing websites, watching movies, playing games, and shopping online. Without a responsive web design, you'll be missing out on the opportunity to engage these people and turn them into customers for your business. But with a responsive website, your customer base will grow as more and more people adopt mobile devices. So now the question is, is this a chance you want to pass up? You decide.
