The Importance of Responsive Design: Why Your Website Needs to Be Mobile-Friendly

 

In today’s digital age, it’s more important than ever for businesses to have a mobile-friendly website. Just think about how many times you used your smartphone today. If you’re like an average adult, you’ve probably used it to reach out to others, entertain yourself and go on the internet to search for awesome goods and helpful information.

With more and more people using their mobile phones and other devices to access the internet and shop for new products, businesses that don’t have mobile-friendly websites are missing out on a large potential audience.

What Is Responsive Design

A website with a responsive design is one that automatically adjusts its images, layout, text, buttons and more to fit the screen size of the device it’s being used on. This means that websites with responsive designs will be usable on devices with all kinds of different screens. From large television screens to tiny smartphone screens, your site should be fully functional.

A few key elements of creating good, responsive design are:

• Using High-Quality Images, Videos And Other Visual Media. Images and videos can make your website so much more visually appealing. Guests are more likely to stick around for a lovely page with images and text rather than just a block of text – even if both text passages are exactly the same. Make sure you use high-quality images and videos that are optimised for mobile usage so that they look amazing on any screen size.
• Ensure That The Mobile Version Of Your Auckland Website Isn’t Just A Mini-Version Of Your Desktop Site. When a guest views your site on their smartphone, they shouldn’t just see a mini-version of your desktop site. Simply scaling your desktop site down can make it extremely difficult to navigate on smaller screens. Instead, make sure your navigational buttons are big and easy to click, your font is large and easy to read and so on.
• Test Your Site On Different Devices. Once you’ve created your website, make sure you test it out yourself. Use it on different kinds of phones, different PCs, different tablets and other devices you can use. This will help you find any issues with your responsive design.

Why Responsive Design Is So Important In 2023

There are so many reasons why responsive design is important for Auckland businesses that want to succeed online; too many to list here! Here are just a few of the most important reasons why:

A Larger Reach. You want to reach as many people as possible with your content because that’ll increase your chances of sales and positive attention. By making your site usable on smartphones, you’re opening your business up to a massive new audience. If you don’t optimise your site for mobile usage, then you’ll be alienating people who prefer to search for new businesses on their phones or other devices.

Better User Experience. You need your website to be as user-friendly as possible. So, everything that can improve the experience of your users is a good thing. A good, responsive design can vastly enhance the experience of users who visit your site from their mobile devices.

Imagine opening a new website on your phone, only to discover that it’s a pain to use on your smaller screen. The images might be hard to see, the text might be hard to read, and every time you try to click a button, you end up clicking the one next to it.

Mobile users will often abandon a website if it’s not mobile-friendly, and could you blame them? No one wants to struggle with a website on their phones unless they really need that Auckland business’s services. And, if they’re a first-time guest to your site, they could quickly leave to find a competitor of yours who has a mobile-friendly site.

Along with a mobile-friendly design, be sure your web design team makes other efforts to improve your site’s user experience.

Better SEO. Mobile-friendly websites tend to rank much higher in search engine results when compared to sites that don’t have responsive designs. Google has made it very clear that mobile-friendliness is a ranking factor, and users already tend to like mobile-optimised sites over non-optimised sites.

This means that sites with great responsive designs will often appear higher in search results on mobile devices. Ranking highly is always something that you should strive for, so this is just another great reason why mobile-friendliness is a must.

Lower Bounce Rates. ‘Bounce rates’ refers to the percentage of guests who leave your site after viewing only one page. Clearly, you want to reduce your bounce rates as much as possible.

It’s a pretty bad sign when someone views only a single page of your website before abandoning it. If they do that, that means that something about your site was unappealing to them and that unappealing thing could’ve been the fact that your site isn’t easy to use on mobile.

Having a mobile-optimised site means that more people will stick around to see what you have to offer because they know they’ll have an easy time getting around your site.

Improving your user experience, in general, can help to lower your bounce rates. Make sure your website looks amazing, is informative and is easy to navigate. All three of these things can get people to stay and explore your Auckland business.

What You Can Do To Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly And Great For All Devices

One of the best things you can do if you want your site to be mobile-friendly is to work with talented web developers who know exactly what to do – like our team at Kiwi Website Design! Our services involve website design, software development, mobile apps and more.  We know we have the experience and skills needed to create amazing sites, and we’d love to see what we can do for you.

You can view our online portfolio to get an idea of what we can do. Do you see anything that you’d like for your site? Feel free to call us on 0800 932 669 to tell us about it! We’d also be happy to answer any questions you have.

Make sure your Auckland site is fully optimised for mobile usage with Kiwi Website Design.