In recent times Australia has seen a boom in the use of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Just about everyone you see these days either has an iPhone glued to their hand, can’t travel without their iPad, or their PC has cobwebs due to the favourability of its mobile successor.
As companies like Samsung, Apple and Microsoft constantly release new smartphones and tablets, screen sizes are constantly changing too!
Why does it all matter do you ask? Well if you own or manage a website, to ensure you aren’t left behind the eight ball, your site must be responsive in order to enhance mobile usability, which means in layman’s terms, your site must be usable for people on their PC, laptop, smartphone or tablet.
The question is, how do you want your website to look and act while your consumers are visiting? Do you want the screen to display a simple and easy to use platform that still provides all the necessary elements of your full site but in a neat little package? Then the answer is ‘responsive design’.
So what is responsive website design do you ask? Responsive website design is a way of designing a website so that customers receive the best possible viewing experience, such as minimal zooming, panning and scrolling, resulting in a website that is appealing to the eye and most importantly completely functional across any screen size.
The advantage of responsive website design is its functionality. Your site will look like a modern, mobile website from any smartphone or tablet, and will display an amazing full-scale website on your desktop computer, too.
Do you recall a time where you’ve had something really important to do on your smartphone, like booking a flight for example, and the site was not responsively designed, making it extremely difficult and annoying for you to find what you were looking for or even to click buttons? By reducing the frustration caused by non-responsive websites, do your customers a favour and provide them with a sleek, easy and fast responsive site.
You can implement a responsive design in a variety of ways, by creating a new website with a fresh look and feel that utilises responsive technology providing increased usability over any mobile device. Or instead, you can integrate responsive website design into your existing website to make it more user-friendly, without making huge changes in the overall look and feel.
Let’s face it, mobile devices are taking over the world and at the pace of a cheetah on steroids. Since 2011, the percentage of Australian’s using tablets rose from 16% in 2011 to a huge 40% in 2012. If you choose to ignore the proliferation of mobile devices, thus the need for responsive web design, you are putting yourself in danger of going out of business by 2015.
So, is responsive website design right for your business? If you are looking to increase your website’s functionality, improve conversion rates and engage your audience then the answer is most certainly a yes!
How will your website look to your users?
If your business website isn’t mobile-friendly and you’re concerned about the opportunities you’re missing out on, Bambrick can help. In addition to Website Design, our Brisbane digital marketing company also provides SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing services. Get in touch with the team on (07) 3216 1151, or complete our online contact form and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.