Is your website cutting-edge, or living in the past?

For your company to succeed, you need to have a fast, responsive website that will benefit your customers. This means you need a responsive web design.

What is responsive web design, you may be wondering? Simply, it’s a website that automatically adjusts size and formatting, no matter what size screen it’s being viewed on. This means your website will look gorgeous on any device, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

If you need to update your website, keep reading for seven key reasons why it needs to be responsive.

1. Responsive Web Design Improves Your SEO

One of the main reasons to have a responsive design is for SEO purposes. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a set of actions that will help your website rank higher on search engines like Google.

Google knows that users are browsing not just on computers, but also on tablets, phones, and laptops. Since they want their users to have a positive experience with Google, they favor sites with responsive web design, as those websites look good on any sized device.

If you need help with SEO and web design, you may want to look for a web design agency that you can work with to improve the responsiveness of your site.

2. Easier to Maintain

It’s much more work than you might think to maintain one traditional website and one mobile-friendly website. Essentially, you’re left doing everything twice–uploading content, running ad campaigns, and managing SEO.

You’ll make life much easier for your web developer if you have one responsive site, rather than two versions of your site.

3. Better UX

There is so much competition on the web—each time a user searches for a topic related to your business, it’s likely that thousands and thousands of results appear.

To keep users on your website and not clicking back to the search results, you need to offer a good user experience, referred to as UX.

For example, if a potential customer is browsing on their tablet and they pull up your website, which isn’t responsive, the formatting will look off and they won’t be able to fully view the site on their device.

This is off-putting, as your site will appear unprofessional. Instead, you want to offer a beautiful, easy-to-navigate website that will keep users on your site for as long as possible, reading blogs, browning products, or reading each page.

To do this, your company’s site needs to be responsive.

4. Increased Sales

One of the main reasons to have a company website is for online ordering. Shopping online has never been more popular, with consumers turning to the web for anything and everything.

However, you need to know that many consumers shop via their smartphone—70% of shoppers searching for products on their phones make a purchase within an hour. They know what they want and they are eager to buy.

So, what happens if they come across your site on their smartphone, but it isn’t responsive? Likely, they will leave your site and find another.

Your site needs to make online shopping easy on any device, including phones and tablets. With a responsive design, shopping will be easy for everyone, no matter what device they use.

5. Keeps Your Customers Happy

Easy, effective web design is important for the simple fact that it keeps your customers happy. If they like your website, they are more likely to think of your company favorably, recommend it to friends and family, and become repeat customers.

If you’re not sure whether your website is working for your customers, you may want to set up a short survey to find out. Add a pop-up feedback window or include a survey to customers after they’ve purchased, asking them what they think of your site.

Try offering a small discount as an incentive for users to complete it, as this provides valuable data that you can use to improve your website.

6. Saves Money

Responsive websites are here to stay–if anything, we will see internet traffic increasing from smartphones and decreasing from desktops, as more of us enjoy the convenience of larger phone screens and unlimited internet plans.

If you upgrade your website now, it will last for years to come, saving you money over time.

Plus, responsive website design requires fewer resources and staffing time, saving you money. Whenever a change is made to your website, your site automatically creates mobile-friendly versions of the page, so there’s no need to do it yourself.

This saves the time of your IT staff, which also saves you money.

7. Consistency

When it comes to developing a brand, consistency is king. Look at global corporations like McDonald’s and Nike—customers can recognize their logo anywhere, since they are simple and always look the same.

To help build loyalty to your company’s brand, you also need to think about consistency. Your business logo, colors, and text should look identical, whether they are viewed online, on a shopping bag, or in a display window.

Brand inconsistency confuses customers and makes them less likely to remember your company.

When it comes to developing consistency, a key way is to make sure your website always looks the same. Whether browsing on a computer or phone, customers should instantly recognize your website and logo, allowing them to browse and purchase online.

Update Your Web Design Today

Is your website design up to scratch? If not, it’s time to upgrade to responsive web design. Luckily, this is easier than you might think.

To get started, look for a company offering responsive web design services that can work with you to update and improve your website. Within a matter of weeks, you’ll have an amazing new website up and running, allowing customers to navigate and browse with ease.

Get started today to start enjoying the benefits that responsive web design can bring to your business.

Did you find this article helpful? If so, please browse some of our other other articles to learn more.

By Eddy Z

Eddy is the editorial columnist in Business Fundas, and oversees partner relationships. He posts articles of partners on various topics related to strategy, marketing, supply chain, technology management, social media, e-business, finance, economics and operations management. The articles posted are copyrighted under a Creative Commons unported license 4.0. To contact him, please direct your emails to [email protected].