When you go on a website on a desktop or laptop, you will be introduced to your typical webpage. This is designed to give the website as much room as it can utilize for the viewer to make a thoughtful assessment. Your website is judged accordingly: whether they should continue to scroll or not. However, what if you went to that same website but on your phone? One of two things may happen.
You may find that it looked exactly as it had on the desktop but minimized to the point where you can barely read the text. The other reality of that same website might otherwise be a truncated display with much less appearing but with a more streamlined feel. This is due to the proper implementation of responsive web design. This is the essential answer to, what is the purpose of responsive web design?
Though, why use it? Why would any business use it in the construction of your website? In this article, you will see what it is, understand more deeply the answer to “What is the purpose of responsive web design?” and why it is important to a business’s overall reach online.
Table of Contents
What Is Responsive Web Design?
What is responsive web design, and what is the purpose of responsive web design? These are very similar but important questions to answer. Responsive web design (or RWD) is a web design technique that allows your website to ‘respond’ or, in other words, adapt to the device in which the website is being viewed. It is through a process called Cascading Style Sheets (or CSS) that formats your webpage’s design. With it, you can choose whichever content you would want to show. It optimizes your website features to be more in line with the screens on mobile devices without the need to design multiple sites. All you need is one website, and a well-incorporated RWD will handle the rest. This improves the user experience (or UX) and makes it less of a chore for visitors to have to search for content. The more user-friendly your website is, the more time you will be able to spend on running your business.
What Is the Purpose of Responsive Web Design?
Now that you know what responsive web design is, you’re probably wondering, “What is the purpose of making your design responsive?” in terms of whether it’s truly worthwhile.
Enhances Mobile Navigation
A key website feature is your website’s responsiveness to mobile devices. Long story short, people generally use their phones to use the internet nowadays. That definitely sounds like the understatement of the century. Roughly 54.4% of worldwide online traffic has happened on a cellphone. There are now officially more people surfing websites through their phones than a computer. It is no surprise that websites have now started looking into new practices that optimize their content to be more mobile-friendly. If you want, there are tools you could use that can check just how effective your website operates on mobile devices. It is by no means mandatory that you incorporate RWD for your website. However, at this point, we highly recommend that you do. Your business’s reach can always be better, and tapping into that mobile phone demographic will yield great results. Of course, if there is a company not using responsive websites, there is potential for you to gain a larger following.
Establishes Consistency for Customers
When learning “What is the purpose of making your design responsive?” on a deeper level, one of your web design objectives is consistent customer interaction and retention. You want to have people stay on your page, and if they leave, return regularly. How is this possible? Is it due to great website graphics, superior keyword implementation, or something else?
If you were to do a Google search, the most optimized websites tend to show above the fold. What the “fold” represents is what the SERP shows without having to scroll down. That is because Google takes into consideration relevance, quality, and keyword phrasing. It then prioritizes topics that excel in this criteria. However, if potential viewers are on their phones or even tablets and the website is slow, unorganized, and illegible, there is nothing stopping them from exiting the stage right into a better, more attractive website. Unfortunately, the inverse is also true.
You can make an incredible content-filled website with sleek, modernized designs throughout your website. Still, if your top navigation is subpar (the very first thing a viewer will see on your webpage after loading), your work in all other aspects will be in vain. RWD makes it so that your website is easily accessible from multiple sources and gives the ability for visitors to maneuver around.
Here is the intriguing part. After developing a responsive website, it will give you the time that would have been spent on making two separate websites optimized for desktop and mobile by allowing you to invest more time in keyword research. It is almost as if all practices that optimize your website stems from having a responsive website. It goes to show that if your website is easily navigable, then people will be willing to return later and even stay longer. This, in turn, lowers your bounce rate.
Increases Engagement Through Multiple Social Media Platforms
As you continue to develop your website for mobile devices, you will start to see a strong relationship between websites and social media. This will be particularly apparent when it comes to how accessible your content is on social media platforms. Responsive web design has elements that incorporate rather well within social spaces because it can adapt to the devices of those who use social platforms via clickable links. Those clickable links then improve shareability because they allow mobile carriers to access what those on desktops and laptops can access. It is quite a cyclical process. You will eventually start to see the benefits of your shareable content because you took the time to have mobile users feel included in that process.
Promotes Goodwill With Consumers
As per what you may have learned in school, a strong ethos is guaranteed to persuade an audience. Shoddy designs could be argued as the main factor in lessening a website’s credibility amongst the viewership. A professional website will garner a good ethos because it shows the effort you put into your business. You are doing your best work to improve your business’s brand awareness when you put in the time to show that you care about your customer experience. You want your company to be seen in the best light. In doing so, others would want to see your business for all the experiences it has to offer. People like to feel appreciated. What better way to show appreciation to someone browsing your website than to respect their time? Having your content concise, as well as fairly informational, on the first viewing is a skill in itself that will lead to a great community.
Why Is Responsive Web Design Important to Businesses?
27.6% of the world’s population are online shoppers. Having a well-designed site that has options to buy products is a very good website feature for online businesses. If it is an easily navigable site, it can send the potential lead right back at the beginning after having looked through your content. If you made a good impression and you have a great product explained through creative content, you may just turn that lead into a paying customer. A prominent source would be the utilization of e-commerce. In fact, an effective e-commerce implementation is conducive to an established responsive design. By definition, responsive designs are how accessible a website is across multiple devices. A sign of a good e-commerce website is how easily users can access it on those same devices. There is an inherent synergy between both.
Another great reason for its importance, especially for small business owners, is that it is cost-efficient. This is because you will not have to pay for having two separate websites for desktop/laptop and mobile. At the end of the day, this means that you can spend your time and money in areas that deserve it more.
How SEO Design Chicago Can Help You in Establishing a Strong Responsive Website
There is a lot of content when it comes to understanding how RWDs work. However, learning “What is the purpose of making your design responsive?” is essential. Being a business owner, as much as you would like to look through all the ins and outs of important development for your website, you may not have the time to commit. At least, this isn’t possible without sacrificing your attention to other aspects of your business, irrespective of your page showing up on multiple devices. Those at SEO Design Chicago have the skills and knowledge to put you in the best position with a well-established RWD.
FAQ:
- What is responsive web design?
- How does responsive web design work?
- Why do I need a responsive website design?
- How does RWD help businesses?
- Why is mobile navigation important?
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