Why is responsive design good for small business websites?

Responsive web design has become the go-to solution for companies who want a user-friendly interface and higher customer retention. Suppose your enterprise has come this far without taking advantage of all the benefits it has to offer. In that case, you may already have seen lower visitor numbers and a disappointing conversion rate.

As a responsible business owner, you’ll probably need convincing before paying to upgrade your web presence to one that includes responsive design. However, by opting in, you’ll soon see a return on investment that will make it worthwhile. In a nutshell, responsive design is just better than what has gone before and to keep up with the competition, you’ll need it too.

Responsive web design is crucial for most businesses because it allows your users to achieve their goals quickly and smoothly. A smartphone can pull up the essential elements of your website on a smartphone. Appearing as an entirely functional version of the original, complete with all the utility you’d offer customers on a laptop or desktop computer. If you fail to provide a mobile-friendly experience like this for your visitors, they will not hang around; they’ll click away and complete the action or purchase on a rival site.

Web designers recently created different pages depending on where they viewed them. A tablet, for example, has another screen resolution than a laptop, so a tablet would optimise the content for viewing on that particular device.

However, responsive web design has revolutionised how users look at the internet. It has created an overall experience allowing us to view pages on a PC, smartphone or notebook similarly. When they build a site, designers use the same coding on any number of resolutions, giving every device the same degree of functionality.

Responsive web designers believe that their clients’ web pages should be accessible to every visitor, giving them an optimal experience, regardless of their device. This intelligent response to a web user’s actions keeps your company relevant in an ever-changing online marketplace; it boosts your e-commerce figures and makes visiting your site an enjoyable experience.

In technical terms, there are three key features of responsive web design. The secret ingredient is considered to be media queries. These are filters added to the CSS or Cascading Style Sheets, affecting the look and feel of any individual page. CSS is a handy tool for web designers, but by tagging on a media query adoption, the process of resizing, rendering and orienting a page becomes far easier.

Another linchpin of responsive design is the flexible layout of a grid formation. Ideal for formatting margins, positioning the essential elements of a page and getting the spacing right. Meaning the design is not limited to a certain number of columns. Choose as many or as few as is appropriate for the page. A flexible layout also removes the need to work out design and text size based on pixels.

Instead, designers use percentages to adopt a far more fluid approach to producing each page. Pixels work well on photographic images but are a clumsy tool on some devices. One pixel is expressed as three dots on the phone, but ten dots on a desktop, changing the quality of an image considerably between devices.

The third component of responsive design involves using CSS or a dynamic resizing function to create flexible images, videos and other content. Text can flow relatively smoothly as the containing area resizes, but web designers must use different techniques to spread this across multiple segments. Dynamic resizing gives web designers greater control over how a page behaves and enables them to add or remove components as needed.

Taken as a whole, these multiple technologies mean visitors can enjoy the feeling of familiarity, regardless of what device they happen to be using or will be using in the future.

When a mobile user changes from landscape to portrait mode, the intuitive design will ensure the page gets bigger or smaller. Furthermore, each element, an image, text box, or video, will also resize itself to correspond with the dimensions.

Have you ever tried to access a website and discovered that it was almost impossible to navigate around without shrinking and enlarging the text or buttons? You’ll understand why responsive design is considered good practice for most website owners.

Until recently, mobile web design practice was far more relevant to modern consumers than its responsive design counterpart. This approach sees designers using smartphones as a starting point and progressively upgrading technology through notepads, desktop computers, and beyond. This method meant that companies needed two websites, one for their mobile pages and one for PC users.

In the early golden years of mobile web design, there were some reasons why experts thought that web applications should constantly be developed first for use on a mobile device. Most notable was the prevalence of smartphones, and their popularity continued to skyrocket. Companies could promote their service or product to the next generation of computing consumers by creating a platform that favoured these millions of users.

Secondly, a mobile design fosters a cleaner concept without room for extraneous elements or unnecessary page clutter. On a screen the size of that on a mobile phone, there is not enough room to crowbar in extra buttons and widgets – instead, a design team has to focus on what is needed. Giving users a clear route to what they want was assumed that their experience would be better and faster, leaving them more inclined to return or convert them into paying customers.

Mobile applications were thought to have far more utility than PC-based software. What users expect from their laptops paled in comparison to the capabilities offered by smartphones. From a digital compass to gyroscopic effects, touch screen inputs and voice control, designers hoped to build and produce a modern web design not limited by the constraints of a PC.

Although there are pros and cons for adopting a mobile site to run parallel to the leading site, responsively designed pages are ideal for retailers who want the same website with plenty of utility for every user. A single site also simplifies marketing campaigns; there is only a need to manage one site and one SEO strategy. Therefore, a website that features responsive design can save companies time and money and provide a seamless, convenient way for customers to shop.

When a team of designers build you a responsive website, you know it will adapt intuitively to whatever device accesses it, but where is the evidence that proves this is a factor in commercial success?

The content marketing company, Brand Point, found that over 90% of consumers’ buying decisions are affected by visual elements. In other words, if people land on your site and like the look of the place, they are more likely to stay and buy.

Screen resolutions are changing as new devices reach the market. Web developers Spyderweb found that in 2010 there were just 97 different screen resolution sizes, but by 2013 that figure had leapt to 232. The only way of tackling this increase is to have a responsive website optimised for every customer, whatever device they favour.

Customers are driven away by high wait times and pages that take too long to appear; even back in 2009, 47% of people expected a load time of just two seconds on a web page. In a study carried out by cloud service provider Akamai, it was also found that 40% of web users clicked away if they had not gained access to a page within 3 seconds. That is a pretty narrow window of opportunity, and it is fair to assume that people’s expectations have increased since compiled.

Although external factors like a lack of Wi-Fi or 4G can also affect wait times, the importance of speed for business sites cannot be underestimated. Wed designers can write code for your responsive site that makes it selectively load the elements needed or even bring in graphics at a later stage.

Design matters because it can significantly impact the number of new page visitors. These people have reached you through typing in specific search criteria and decided to click on the link to your site. Web designers, Domain7 has reported that in the case of their client Regent College, there was a leap of 99% in unique visitors after a revamp of their responsive web design.

If your mobile pages leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth of your visitors, they are far less likely to view your entire organisation favourably, and they’ll tell their friends. Industry experts at the Search Engine Journal discovered that 57% of people would never recommend a company with poorly designed pages. They are strengthening the case for a consistent web strategy that performs how your customers want it to – wherever they happen.