More and more people are accessing the internet on hand-held devices, because they want information on the move 24/7. It's an unstoppable trend, and to reach those people effectively, your website needs to be responsive. The internet is now an integral part of our lives, and increasingly people want access to it 24/7. So what does a responsive website actually do? Responsive website design provides a fluid layout for your website that automatically changes 'responsively' and renders the optimum website experience to best suit the user's viewing device, I.e. PC – Tablet – Mobile phone & wide screen TVs. What's more, providing a single, dynamic version of your website to desktop and mobile visitors makes it search engine friendly. That explains why Google loves responsive website design. In fact, Google have stated that it is their 'recommended configuration' for building smartphone and tablet optimised websites.
Your website is your shop window on the internet - often the first point of contact with customers who find you by searching online. As such, visitors should find it user-friendly and it's content should be relevant to their needs and informative or entertaining. Above all they should be able to register their interest in your business or buy your product with ease.
Should load quickly - making users wait for pages to load will lead to many going elsewhere, it should be organised in such a way that makes navigating around the site easy, links between pages should be obvious and point to the right places, be clearly and simply laid out so that users can find what they're looking for on the page, too much clutter is a big turn off.
If you have a website you're happy with, why shell out more money to create one that's responsive! The question is, can you afford not to? Take a look at these statistics, There are more mobile phones in the UK than people, The number of smart phone searchers doubles every two months. Tablet sales are expected to exceed 100 million this year, 86% of all adults own at least one mobile phone, 52% of UK mobile phone users have a smartphone.
You don't have to be a master statistician to realise that the trend towards internet access via mobile devices is gathering pace and is already unstoppable. This means that the chances of your website being accessed via a mobile device are increasing every day, so you need to make sure that the visitor experience is a good one. You may only get one chance!
Responsive website design means there is no longer a need to build a separate mobile website in addition to your traditional desktop website. A single website covers all devices, and so development time is significantly reduced. Then think about how many potential customers you might lose through not having a responsive website. Cost effective? You could say it's a no brainer.