There is no doubt that responsive web design is very important from current web design. The adoption of smartphones and tablets is growing rapidly and with them the importance of having mobile-friendly sites.
Smartphones and tablets have changed the way we experience design and user experience. Before the spread of mobile devices, web designers had only the challenge of maintaining the appearance of their websites.
However, interacting with websites on smartphones and tablets is not the same as doing it on a desktop with desktop monitors. Factors such as click versus touch, screen size, pixel resolution, and support for Flash technology have become key points in web development.
If SEO (search engine optimization) is a component in your digital marketing strategy, having a website that is compatible with mobile phones and tablets is becoming essential. Smartphone sales surpassed desktop sales, and the use of mobile internet has shifted to desktop computers in 2014.
It is only logical that the use of cell phones and tablets for web browsing will increase more and more.
What is responsive web design?
Responsive Web Design (WDR) is an approach to website layout and programming so that the website provides an ideal viewing experience (ease of reading and navigation, with minimal scaling and horizontal scrolling) across a variety of different devices and computers, from desktop computers to smartphones.
The designer responsible for a responsive web design must ensure that the site navigation, screen layouts, text and images, video players, and other interactive components automatically adjust on a wide variety of devices. This way, you won’t have to spend time and money to maintain and update two website versions: one for desktop and one for mobile phones. Having now understood what responsive web design is, let’s make a look at the benefits and why responsive web design is important for creating websites.
Advantages of responsive web design
1. Super flexibility
Responsive web design sites are fluid, that is, their content adapts freely to all screen resolutions and all devices. Both grids and images are fluid. Just as a liquid spreads or dilutes to allow the content to fit in a tight space while maintaining the appearance, the responsive web design fluidity achieves the same result with the website content on a screen.
2. Excellent user experience
While content is king, and the ability to be discovered is a measure of success, it is the user experience that allows visitors to consume content on any website, regardless of the device. Thus, responsive web design is about enabling a great experience, regardless of whether it is on desktop or smartphone, tablet, or smart tv.
Responsive web design serves both the busy professional during the day and the student who needs to find results for study research. No scrolling or resizing for your website to be accessed on your favorite device.
3. Low cost
The advantages of having a single website that fits any type of use on all devices are significant when compared to having two separate websites. One site costs less than two sites, and the savings can be substantial.
Sites designed only for cell phones do not offer the navigation advantages that a site designed in a traditional way for desktops. The web design responsive improves site optimization for search engines (SEO), since it has all the targeted visitors to a single site, no matter what device they prefer to use.
4. Recommended by Google
With a 67% share of the Internet search market, when Google speaks, marketers listen. Google claims that responsive web design is its recommended configuration for mobile phones, and still claims that responsive web design is today the best practice to be used in this industry.
This is because professional websites with responsive design have a unique URL (website address), regardless of the device. This makes it easier and more efficient for Google to search, index, and organize all content. Compare that to a mobile site that has URLs other than its desktop version, requiring Google to search and index multiple versions of the same site.
Also, Google prefers responsive web design because content that is organized in this way, with the same URL for all versions, is much easier to share, interact with and link to than content that lives on a separate website in the mobile version. Take as an example a user who shares content from a mobile site with a friend on Facebook who then accesses the link using a desktop computer.
This would result in impaired website viewing, losing the potential for reading, and viewing. This creates a terrible user experience and as Google places a lot of emphasis on user experience as a measure of the ranking of its results, this makes it great to consider when thinking about SEO.
5. Very easy to manage
Having two separate websites, one for desktop and one for mobile requires managing two SEO campaigns. Managing a website and an SEO campaign is much easier than managing two websites and two campaigns.
This is a key advantage that responsive web design has over having a separate mobile version. With that in mind, there are benefits to having a mobile-specific SEO strategy, such as optimizing for keywords that are more likely to be used on a smartphone.
For example, someone looking for a restaurant using their cell phone will be more inclined to use the term “next” in their search. However, a mobile SEO strategy does not need to have a separate mobile site. Nothing prevents us from using cell-specific keywords on a website that can be used on a desktop.
6. Lowest rejection rate
This is another important point that is worth mentioning: nobody likes to be forced to constantly make that pinch movement with their fingers to read something on the smartphone screen or find it pleasant to see the website screen all weird on large monitors – remember that many televisions today also access the internet.
So, if your page looks right for these people, they will certainly spend a lot more time browsing there and exploring the possibilities of your page.
7. Cheaper than individual pages
The logic is not only obvious but also clear: developing a website with responsive design is cheaper than producing 2 or even 3 options so that each one adapts to a certain type of device.
8. Best user experience
Having a responsive design means thinking about the fonts that will give a better reading on the small screens, choosing images that will load faster, and using colors that prioritize the user experience. With these and so many other precautions, the responsive design makes your site a much more intuitive environment compared to so many others, which will certainly be noticed by the visitor in two stages!
So, was it clear the importance of having a website with a responsive design today? Because especially for those who need the internet to stay on the market – and even enjoy the benefits of content marketing – working on any device is simply essential! Now tell us here: is your site already responsive? What are you still waiting to update? Share your experiences with us!
Infographic:
