The Importance of Responsive Web Design

Practically every business – large or small – these days recognises the importance of an online presence. That is probably why you are reading this: because you realise that a well-designed, user-friendly and informative website is your window on the world and probably your immediate introduction to the customers with whom you want to do business.

Web design is important, therefore, but what is meant by the need for it also to be responsive?

Responsive web design

Alongside the development of the internet itself has been the steady diversification and sophistication of ways of accessing it. No longer are websites visited only by users through a desktop computer, but also by laptops, tablets and smartphones. The choice seems to be widening all of the time.

Amongst the detail statistics published by Smart Insights on the 27^th April 2016, is clear evidence of users’ swing towards access to the internet via smartphone rather than conventional PC, both in terms of time spent on line and the effectiveness of online marketing.

Accompanying this switch to mobile devices such as smartphones are the additional factors of:

•          a proliferation of internet browsers;

•          the relatively small screens used by smartphones (certainly when compared to the desktop monitor);

•          touch-screen interfaces; and

•          potentially slower internet connection speeds.

In order to optimise the visitor experience to your website, its functioning and design needs to take account of all of these developments and respond to the particular way in which any given individual is accessing your site. In short, your web design needs to be responsive to any number of visitors’ user preferences, hardware and search engine choices. 

Choosing your website design company

These considerations have a significant impact on your choice of a website design company.

You may need advice, for instance, on whether your marketing, search engine preferences and sales campaigns are going to be better served by developing a single website that is responsive to both mobile and desktop access or whether it is worth developing separate websites for each type of device.

Clearly, you are likely to be keeping things simpler and more straight forward in terms of sharing information and keeping it all up to date if you develop a single website that can be accessed from multiple types of device.

There may be an argument, however, for pitching your search engine optimisation (SEO) in a mobile-specific way, to take advantage of the different way in which mobile users might be using the search facility on their smartphone rather than a desktop PC.

Pros and cons such as these are important aspects on which a professional and experienced website design company such as CSI Media – our mission is to help make the we work for you and your business.

Recognising the importance of having a responsive we design is one big step towards your making the most of the internet and the many and varied forms of access there is available these days. We may help you stay abreast of, or one step ahead of, such fast-moving developments.