If the mean­ing behind the term “respon­sive web­site” is unfa­mil­iar to you, you’re more than like­ly in the major­i­ty. Let’s start with some back­ground infor­ma­tion, for those who aren’t famil­iar with this fair­ly new functionality.

Respon­sive web­sites adjust auto­mat­i­cal­ly to fit on desk­top, tablet and smart­phone browsers. In the past, you’ve prob­a­bly opened a web­site on your smart­phone and it was a minia­turised ver­sion of what you would see on your desk­top. You zoomed in and then moved the web­site around and enlarged and zoomed out as need­ed, to read text and click on things. That was not a respon­sive web­site. A respon­sive web­site looks good whether you’re look­ing at it on a phone, a tablet, or on a desk­top. In fact, you’re read­ing this post on a respon­sive web­site. If you’re able to, open this page in a desk­top brows­er and also a tablet (por­trait or land­scape) or a smart­phone, and you’ll see the sub­tle changes that are pro­grammed in so that the site dis­plays in an appro­pri­ate for­mat on the screen, and ori­en­ta­tion, of choice.

So, do I need a Responsive Website?

Is your busi­ness or organ­i­sa­tion tak­ing advan­tage of respon­sive web design right now or plan­ning to in the very near future? If not, you are in dan­ger of los­ing a lot of poten­tial busi­ness in the com­ing year. There are three gen­er­al excep­tions to this:

1. You don’t depend on your web­site to stay in business
2. Your com­peti­tors are not impor­tant or you don’t have any
3. You are famil­iar with respon­sive design, you’ve already decid­ed it’s not right for you and you have an alter­na­tive mobile strategy

If any of the above apply to you, please feel free to read on for infor­ma­tion­al pur­pos­es and per­haps com­ment below on your web­site expe­ri­ences. If your com­pa­ny or organ­i­sa­tion depends on its web pres­ence enough that los­ing the busi­ness it brings to you would be a major blow, get­ting a respon­sive web­site as soon as pos­si­ble should be your pri­ma­ry online mar­ket­ing goal.

Responsive is Better

To illus­trate why respon­sive is bet­ter, take a look at these stats from a web­site I admin­is­ter, which is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of many oth­ers. If you use Google Ana­lyt­ics on your web­site, you can look at these kind of sta­tis­tics and gauge how urgent a respon­sive change is for your company.

The chart shows web­site vis­i­tors using mobile, tablet and desk­top devices over the last 12 months.

In this case, the web­site receives around 34% of its traf­fic via mobile devices. For the pur­pos­es of this analy­sis, we’re includ­ing tablets as mobile devices. Giv­en that this web­site is not respon­sive, and does­n’t have a mobile ver­sion, a large chunk of vis­i­tors are receiv­ing a sub-opti­mal experience.

And that’s not the worst of it…

What this chart does­n’t show is con­sumer trend. This com­par­i­son below shows us the obvi­ous direc­tion in which things are head­ing, as it dis­plays mobile vs. desk­top vis­i­tors for the past 12 months (as above) plus the 12 months pre­ced­ing those. Mobile inter­ac­tion with this web­site dou­bled in one year. This, by itself, should be all the rea­son you need in the case for a respon­sive website.

What Does It Cost?

If you have a rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple brochure web­site for your busi­ness, mod­i­fy­ing your exist­ing site to be respon­sive may cost as lit­tle as a few hun­dred dol­lars or euros. That is assum­ing the design lends itself to respon­sive func­tion­al­i­ty. If you haven’t renewed your web­site in some time, then the chances are you’ll need to go through a com­plete redesign process and incor­po­rate the respon­sive func­tion­al­i­ty into the new site. If you are already think­ing of a web­site “refresh”, then it’s a no-brain­er to add a lit­tle to the bud­get to get the respon­sive­ness your cus­tomers are com­ing to expect.

The Future Is Mobile

With­out a mobile-friend­ly web­site, your online future isn’t bright. If you’re not pro­vid­ing a mobile-friend­ly expe­ri­ence for your cus­tomers, they’ll quick­ly move away from your web­site and head over to your com­peti­tor, whose shiny, new respon­sive web­site is eas­i­er to use. The future, if not com­plete­ly mobile, will cer­tain­ly have its roots in mobile tech­nol­o­gy, as we see users increas­ing­ly favour­ing their mobile devices over desk­top computers.

Get in touch for a free con­sul­ta­tion on your cur­rent web­site and its poten­tial for includ­ing respon­sive functionality.