How important is it to have a mobile responsive website? As per the latest statistics, around 5 billion people use mobile phones, which is approximately 60% of the world’s population.
Mobile Users Around the Globe
According to research, nearly two-thirds of Americans own a smartphone. These smartphone users access a variety of content online with the help of the internet.
So as a business owner looking to reach out to a global audience, you must keep in mind the huge user base that would access your website with a smartphone or tablet.
To provide a good user experience to those viewing your site via smartphone or tablet, you have to make sure that you have a mobile responsive website.
What Does “Mobile Responsive” Mean?
A “mobile responsive” website is one that is designed using elements that resize and rearrange based on the screen size of a device.
No matter what the screen size, details such as images, text, navigation menus, etc., will resize fluidly. If you wish to see whether a website is responsive on mobile or not, you can simply use your smartphone to access it.
Then see if the elements adjust to your mobile screen or not. Responsive websites result in a significant user experience for people who access the site using mobile phones or tablets.
Advantages of Mobile Responsive Websites
1. Better User Experience
A mobile responsive website adjusts itself to display the content in an organized manner on all screen sizes.
Whether a user is on a desktop, tablet, or mobile phone, he will be able to access the website as if the site was built specifically for that particular device.
Mobile responsiveness enhances user involvement a lot and leaves a positive impression on your website visitors.
2. Improved Search Engine Optimization
Search engines prefer mobile-friendly websites. By making your site responsive, you are promoting its ranking on search engines such as Google.
An improved ranking on the search engine means more website visitors, thereby providing more exposure for your business. A responsive site will help your business grow globally at a faster rate.
3. Faster Load Times
Mobile responsive websites load faster on mobile devices. As we all know, mobile internet connections can vary significantly throughout the world.
A faster site allows users to browse on slow internet connections without losing interest or waiting too long.
If the loading times are too high, users can lose interest and leave your website even before they land on it. You bounce rate will increase, which will also have an adverse impact on your search engine ranking.
4. Cost Effective
The idea behind making your website mobile responsive is to reach mobile users effectively. Another way of improving your mobile presence is to develop an application for your business.
Application development can cost you a lot of money. And you’ll have to develop different applications for iOS, Android, Windows, etc., thereby multiplying your costs.
A mobile responsive website can save you the trouble, as well as the expenses, associated with developing mobile applications.
5. Easier to Manage
Creating a separate site for desktop and mobile requires you to double your investment as well as your efforts and your labor force.
Creating separate sites is also time-consuming, and it is expensive to optimize both websites for search engine rankings.
If instead, you make your site mobile responsive, you end up reducing your expenses. You also reduce the effort and labor required to manage two different websites and to rank them in search engines.
6. You Can Utilize Specific Mobile Features
You can embed functionalities on your mobile-friendly site to start various applications depending on the actions a user performs on your website.
For example, if users click on your phone number, they will be taken to the application that manages user calls so that people can call you instantly.
Another example would be that when users click on your contact email, their default email applications will open so that they can contact you via email.
This feature gives a much better user experience compared to when the users would have to copy and paste the information or write it down somewhere and then start an app to call or send an email.
7. Consistent Branding Across Devices
A mobile-friendly site offers consistency to your brand across all devices. If you have different websites for mobile and desktop, users might end up getting confused about whether or not they are on the right site.
This kind of confusion can lead people away from your website. When your website is mobile friendly, users will see the same logo, banner, images, and content, whether they visit your site using desktop or mobile. This consistency will help people trust your website, making it easier for you to acquire clients.
How Do I Make My HTML Website Mobile Friendly?
If your business website is based on static HTML, making your site mobile responsive requires you to hire a professional front-end web developer.
The developer will use HTML, CSS (especially media queries), and JavaScript, along with other frameworks such as Bootstrap or Semantic UI. These will all help to make your website mobile responsive.
Although hiring a professional is a cost-effective solution when compared to application development, hiring someone for this job will cost you a lot of money.
What Is the Best solution for Me As a Business Owner?
If you are running a business and want a mobile-friendly website, your best bet would be to get yourself a WordPress website.
WordPress websites are relatively straightforward to manage. You won’t need any professional to make small changes or update the site with new content.
Moreover, there are thousands of mobile responsive themes in the WordPress theme market nowadays. All you have to do is install the latest version of WordPress on your server. Then install any of the thousands of mobile responsive themes.
After that, just create all your necessary pages and fill them with content relevant to your business. That’s it—you are sorted. You have a mobile-friendly website without having to spend a lot of money.
Importance of a Mobile Responsive Website
What do you think after reading this article? Are mobile responsive themes better or just a gimmick?