The last time you looked up 4 or 5 websites, were you at home sitting at your desk and using your desktop to look them up? There’s a pretty good chance that you didn’t.  In fact, we’d be willing to be bet that it might have been a mobile device that you were using.  If it was, you’re part of the ever-growing group of individuals who are using their mobile devices as much as those individuals that are still using their desktops.

Here’s another question.  When you were looking at those websites on your mobile device, were they scaled down to fit your device’s screen? You might think this has something to do with automatic adjustments or that the webmaster has scaled things down so that the site fits these different mobile devices.  The fact that a website is just as easy to look at on a smartphone as it is on your desktop is due to what is known as “responsive web design.”

What is Responsive Web Design?

According to Webopedia, Responsive Web Design or RWD is an approach or practice that is aimed at designing websites so that the user has the optimal viewing experience across different devices such as desktops, iPads, laptops, mobile phones, and tablets.  The goal is to enable the user to view a website easily with a minimum amount of panning, resizing, and scrolling.  With the ever-increasing number of individuals who use their mobile devices instead of their desktops, it is vital for small businesses to have a responsive web design.

Mobile browsing and shopping is expected to outpace desktop access within the next year.  So it is important for websites to be accessible by mobile users.  Fortunately, responsive web design builds in flexibility so that sites are not confined to a certain height or width and can easily adapt to the screen size of any device they are found on.  Basically, responsive websites are based on the size of the screen they are loaded onto, not on the device itself.  They have also been designed to handle new mobile devices that are released in the future.

3 Primary Reasons for having a Responsive Web Designs

Although it would seem obvious for developing a responsive web design, there are those companies that are apprehensive to do so.  However, the fact that these companies do rely on SEO is the primary reason for making the transition to a mobile-friendly, responsive web design.  However, if SEO is a key factor in your small business, there are 3 primary reasons for developing a responsive web design:

Accessibility from many devices – the most appealing aspect of responsive web design is that you can reach a much larger consumer audience and provide your site visitors with a much better user experience.

• Easier marketing management – you have to employ separate marketing campaigns when you have a mobile-friendly website in addition to your regular one. It makes sense that managing a single marketing campaign would be much easier.  This is a key benefit of having a responsive web design.
• Google-recommended – Google has a 67% market share which is a huge amount by any standards. Basically, individuals pay attention to what Google is saying.  According to the world’s greatest search engine, their recommended mobile configuration is responsive web design, which they also claim is the best practice in the industry.
• Taking all of the above into consideration, responsive web design is vital to having a mobile-friendly website.  The bottom line is that Google recommends it, it makes managing your SEO strategies much easier, and it provides a great user experience overall.

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