Why is Responsive Design for Mobile So Important?

Responsive design for mobile isn’t just about championing good web design for a better mobile experience – it’s about creating a better brand experience. Responsive design affects your SEO, your customer retention levels, your brand reputation, and your business health. Here are the main reasons why responsive design (or a good mobile website) are so important for your business.

Not having a properly optimised mobile site will hold your business back – it’s where your customers are.

Mobile has now surpassed desktop as the principal medium from which people access the web – announced in the UK by Ofcom last year. If most of your customers and users are on mobile – why isn’t your business focusing on mobile too?

Mobile design should be one of the first things you discuss when coming up with a new design strategy– it’s where users are increasingly flocking to. Mobile is an infinitely versatile channel and exploring mobile opportunities should feature as part of your business strategy. Try to plan for the future – technology develops dizzyingly fast.

• Too many design builds start with expensive desktop-first wireframes, with mobile being an add-on or second thought. Make sure you choose a design agency who understand the importance of designing for mobile first.

Search engines want to desperately avoid returning a site with a poor mobile experience that puts users off.

In 2014 when Google first started tagging sites as ‘mobile-friendly’, the subtle shift towards mobile rankings had already happened; ever since, search engines have been working hard on refining their mobile index.  Since the 2015 mobile algorithm update, the mobile ranking stakes have been rising even higher as Google aims to give mobile users a better experience and encourage webmasters to adopt responsive design. Speed on mobile sites has been the latest issue tackled by Google’s accelerated mobile pages project.

• Having a poor mobile experience will lead to lower engagement metrics, and search engines don’t want to give people websites they don’t love to use. Don’t sabotage your chances at ranking your website by not investing in your mobile user-experience now.

Why would you want to frustrate and annoy your customers with a poor user-experience on mobile? This will only lead to a downturn in business, and could even damage your brand.

• Users access sites and brands across a range of devices and in different frames of mind. Make sure that you have content that accurately matches user moods and needs. Be fast when users need it, but know when it’s time to give people all the content they need to make an informed decision.
• Avoid the mobile pitfalls of designing with too small text, content overlap, relying on Flash, using annoying pop ups, and having disappearing menus.
• Don’t forget to optimize the small details you may not think about – like your mobile site search. For example, only show keyword suggestions, make sure your search has a strong typo tolerance, don’t provide too many product details. After all, mobile screens are small!

Without a proper mobile site, you are not only missing out on the potential rankings lift, but also the opportunity get more business through mobile SEO. When busy web browsers trawl through their mobile search results – give your business the best chance of showing up.

Mobile SEO is in many ways a continuation of SEO best practices: provide a great user-experience by optimising your site for users first.

• Mobile SEO is about having great overall on-page SEO, as well as using the possibilities of the mobile experience to their full advantage – like providing a click to call functionality, and optimising the whole website experience for speed.
• In terms of design and user-experience, mobile is all about making the same impact in a much smaller space. Use structured data and org to get better visibility on small mobile screens.