Even with all the importance that various visual elements of web design and CTA (call-to-action) button have over the overall conversion rate of your website, responsiveness should still be your No. 1 concern. Why? Well, simply because a non-responsive website is the easiest way to scare your audience away and make your bounce rate skyrocket.
Why Responsive Design is Important and Google Approved
Not only this but in the mobile-centric world we live in, mobile users are no longer tolerant towards waiting for a website to load slightly slower than it would on the desktop. As the matter of fact, according to one survey, only 11 percent expect their phone to load noticeably slower than their phone.
Finally, if your page fails to load within 4 seconds, about 25 percent of your entire audience will abandon you, while a few seconds later this figure might double. As a general rule, people online expect your website to load within the first two seconds but even waiting for full two seconds to pass might feel like pushing your luck.
With this in mind and without further ado, here are several more reasons why responsive web design is important for your website, as well as a few tips on how to achieve it as effortlessly as possible.
1) Shopping-friendly
These days, there are almost 1.3 billion active websites, some of which are hosted by your direct competitors. This tough competition means that if your website lags for a single second too long, there is nothing simpler for your audience than to just moves on and buy from someone else.
Sure, a lag can be quite annoying but it is the moment at which your website lags that matters even more. You see, a lag during the loading of your homepage is one thing, but a lag between your clients typing the CVV of their credit card and the moment in which your website announces that the purchase has been successful is something much more serious. Saying that your average customer would go through a minor heart attack were this to happen is not even that much of an exaggeration.
Needless to say, this is what bad CX (customer experience) is made of and definitely not something that will generate you return customers. As it happens, return customers are the most valuable asset of every company, due to the fact that about 8 percent of regular customers make up for about 40 percent of all your sales. In other words, by making your website more responsive, you are improving the overall CX and therefore creating a positive previous shopping experience as a basis for future successful collaboration.
2) Lower-cost website maintenance
The more elements your website contains; the more HTTP requests it has to make in order to function. Needless to say, this further complicates the maintenance of the website, seeing as how every single update you make compromises the integrity of your website.
On the other hand, if you decide to go with a bit more minimalistic approach, you will soon find that the costs of your website maintenance are drastically reduced. Apart from this, a performance-centric website is less likely to start malfunctioning on its own, which is why professionals from Nirmal Website Design always put functionality at the forefront.
3) Google favors responsive design
Another thing you should definitely keep in mind is the fact that Google itself favors responsive design and even goes as far as to actively promote it. First of all, we already mentioned that low-responsiveness boosts your bounce rate, which attracts the attention of search engines in a negative way.
Their first impulse is to assume that your website is either non-responsive or promoted through black-hat techniques, which forces people away as soon as they access your website. As it happens, both of these phenomena should be avoided as efficiently as possible.
4) Adaptable to all screen sizes
Throughout this article, we mentioned several times already that the world we live in is mobile-oriented. In 2015 Google announced that there are officially more searches made through mobile than through desktop devices. However, in the world where different phones have different screen sizes, while tablets bring in a completely new dimension, nothing is as simple as it seems.
Furthermore, notebook laptops, as well as classical laptops are a category for themselves, while desktop monitors can be as big as 32 to 82 inches. On the other hand, a highly-responsive design can ensure that your design can adapt to all of them with great efficiency.
In conclusion
As you can see, there are so many reasons why you should focus your attention towards making your website as responsive as possible. Apart from making your website look more professional and providing an overall better experience for your audience, investing towards responsiveness is one step towards the future of your brand. This aspect alone is something that should never be dropped out of sight. 🙂