I know that I have written blogs before about the importance about making your website mobile friendly. I am going to take this one step further and explain to you why your website should be responsive. Now there are two ways that you can go if you want to make your website mobile friendly and that is through either a mobile website or trough responsive. There are many arguments for having a mobile website and I am not saying that it is a bad thing but I am saying as we move into the future and technology continues to advance your website must be responsive. If you don’t have a responsive website now you will in the near future if you want your business to succeed online. Let’s take a closer look at why I believe your website MUST be responsive.
- User Experience – It is proven that nearly 2 out of 3 people will leave your website if it is not user friendly. If you don’t have a mobile friendly website then all of the users that come to your website that are using a mobile device such as a tablet or a smart phone will not have a good experience and likely leave your website. With more and more users begining to use mobile devices to search the web it is likely that in 2014 you will see more traffic come from mobile devices than ever before.
- Blogging and Social Activities – If you are marketing your business online then you are probably involved in blogging and numerous social media activities. Most of these activities draw mobile users to your website. So if you are doing any type of online marketing then you are probably getting potential customers to your website just to see them leave because when they get their they can’t navigate your website properly. This ruins all time and efforts you put towards getting users to your website because most of them will be on your website for a short period of time and the leave without converting.
- Google Prefers Responsive – Google’s own Pierre Farr went on the record at SMX Advanced to declare that Google prefers responsive web design over mobile. I am sure that if you are a small online business owner then you are likely either running some type of SEO campaign or you have heard about it. Google rankings are very important and it is extremely competitive so you will want to do anything you can to help you with those rankings.
- Responsive is Speedy – Google likes to see a mobile website load up in under 2 seconds. If you don’t have a responsive website and try to just use your desktop website for mobile users it is very unlikely that this will even be possible. Now don’t get me wrong you must hire a professional web design company to be able to achieve this type of load times. That is why it is so important you hire a company that knows what they are doing.
- Future Devices – As I said above technology is advancing rapidly. There will be newer and better devices a year from now than there is currently. These new devices may not render properly on a mobile website but with a responsive website it will be able to render future technology properly.
Don’t fall vicitim of not thinking mobile users are that important in your industry simply because your target audience hasn’t been using mobile devices. I promise you they are coming to all industries. You don’t want to get caugh un prepared. It is much better to be proactive rather than reactive. Take my advice that now is the time to get a responsive web design. If you don’t take the inititive to act then by the time you do finally update your website you will be trying catch your competitors and gain some of the customers that you lost.