Benefits of responsive web sites
Increase Conversion Rates and Improve SEO with Responsive Web Design
The main reason to get a responsive web design is so you can give a better online experience to visitors. You can also reach a higher audience especially those who use mobiles and tablets for their online activity and turn those visitors who are having a great online experience into customers.
Responsive website design is very clever and from a users perspective the website knows what device you are using to view that website. If it's a PC or a Mac for instance, you'll see the 'desktop' version of the design. If you're using a smartphone, like an iPhone, or tablet you'll see a different looking website - albeit the same company and the same website but the way the content displays is different to fit the screen you're using.
Once you experience a good responsive website design, you'll probably never look back. Let's have a look at areas that would be affected by responsive website designs.
Easy to maintain
One important point for having a responsive web design is that there is only one website. So, and this assumes your responsive website is from aprompt, you only need one area to update the website, which is great news. This means that all your changes are instant and you only need to update one website - not a different website for each device on which the site is displayed.
Increases Conversion Rates
If you sell services or products on your website you're already increasing your revenue. If your target market uses mobile devices and tablets to browse the internet, and lets be honest most people do nowadays, and you invest in a responsive website design you'll find that you can increase those online sales even more. Creating this upward shift in your online sales would be because you've given your visitors a seamless online experience which converts that visit to a sale.
Improves your SEO
More and more people reach for their smart phone or tablet to search for something online quickly. Most desktops or laptops aren't something you can just carry around and use anytime, especially if there's no wireless network, so the majority of people have smartphones and they're constantly within an arms reach. Smartphones and Tablets are light and small so they're easy enough to carry around. In addition, both types of devices can access the Internet pretty much anywhere. Moreover, Google knows this so within Googles Hummingbird update one of the things they implemented was websites that have responsive web design will rank higher than those that don't resize to fit the screen of the device.
In addition to search engine updates such as Hummingbird, the benefit for the website owner is the fact that you only need to optimise your website content for one website. URL structures stay the same for all devices. With responsive web design you have one URL/website that is easy to update (if it's from aprompt of course) and optimise your content which in turn will optimise content for all devices. Whether it’s a Blackberry, iPad or desktop responsive web design makes it easy for Google to index your website pages.
Alternative to responsive web designs
There is an alternative to responsive website design, it's a mobile website. Now, mobile websites have their place and sometimes they are handy for users because there is usually a link for them to 'go back to desktop site' if they wish. The way mobile websites work is that the browser detects and changes to show either the 'mobile' or 'desktop' site. And using the same assumption that your 'mobile' website is from aprompt you still only have one admin area which is still great news. However, you would incur more costs to make major structural changes to the website because you would effectively have to have the changes done on the desktop version and the mobile version. Therefore if you were thinking about having a mobile website, you'd be best to instead opt for a responsive website design.
Definition of 'responsive website'
Responsive web design or RWD is aimed at providing an optimal viewing experience for users. Thus allowing them to easily read the contents and navigate around the site with a minimum of resizing, panning and scrolling across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones and tablets to desktop monitors).
Responsive websites respond and therefore adapt the layout to the viewing environment by using fluid, proportion-based grids, flexible images. More on the benefits of responsive webdesign