A responsive website is named for its ability to “respond” and reorient its content to fit various screen sizes (smartphone, tablet, etc.) to make information easy to read and navigate for optimal user experience.
Responsive is not the same as mobile-friendly.
Oftentimes a response site is confused with a ‘mobile-friendly’ site. A mobile-friendly site will, in essence, shrink the original website to fit the screen size. However, users are still challenged to engage with the site since lots of pinching to zoom in is required to navigate and read information and filling out forms to make a purchase or sign up for a download can be cumbersome and, at times, simply will not work.
Responsive vs. Dedicated Mobile Website
Before responsive design was an option, many brands opted to create two separate websites: one geared toward the desktop user and one specifically for mobile. That meant two websites to maintain and update and ‘search credit’ was divided so analytics had to be tracked and analyzed separately. In addition to the duplication of effort, mobile sites tended to be a streamlined version of the main desktop sites and did not include all of the content.
Having a responsive site negates the need to maintain two websites and allows companies to showcase all of their info very accessibly from all devices.
Why is a mobile site necessary?
- More than half of all Google searches now happen on mobile devices. (Forbes)
- Fifty percent of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results, and 61 percent of those searches result in a purchase. (Search Engine Watch)
- Eighty-one percent of shoppers conduct online research before buying. (MineWhat)
- Eighty-five percent of Millennials aged 18-24 own smartphone devices. (Nielsen)
- The percentage of donations made from mobile devices in the last year has grown 205 percent. (Nonprofit Hub)
I have a responsive site, now what?
Now that your website is responsive so the user interface leads to a great user experience, capturing the information of interested visitors should be a top priority.
This is where inbound marketing comes in.
Inbound marketing attracts visitors by offering content or information your audience is already interested in. This can be accomplished through downloadable incentives such as white papers, e-books and toolkits, and can help to convert prospects into customers.
Eager to take your website to the next level? Contact us today!
