What is a Responsive Website Design?

What is a Responsive Website Design?

Hello Friends and Blog Readers – Thanks first off for reading this blog article!  i4 Web Services hopes you find it useful. So what is a responsive website design and why is it becoming so important these days?  Well simply, your website has one purpose and that is to provide information that’s is accessible to visitors. You know the goal of your website is to convert these visitors to customers. In order to achieve this goal today, your digital online presence needs to be as current and up to date as the technology it lives on.

From devices such as – smartphones to tablets and even smaller laptop screens, your site’s web design needs to meet a varying list of endless specific expectations of the product makers such as Samsung, LG, Apple – just to name a few. Therefore, your website needs to meet the needs to satisfy a good user experience via responsive design. If your website is not responsive, it could be creating a bad user experience, thus impacting your desired business website goals.  If that is the case, you may want to call us about redesigning your website to better ensure your business’ goals are met. Our direct number is 407-416-1515

Responsive Web Design – Basic Things You Need To Know!

What is Responsive Design?

A responsive website design is the way you present your website so that it allows your business to be able to have one site that functions perfectly across devices of different sizes.

A business owner or business professional may think that all websites are responsive across all platforms. This is just not the truth and search engines are now checking to make certain that they are too. So, take a closer look at the traditional website that is “fixed” (the term ‘fixed’ means it was built at one size only) without responsive design created for it.

Generally a “fixed” website looks really good on a normal desktop monitor screen. Therefore if it is viewed on a desktop, the site function as designed and demonstrate no issues within the user experience. But it the user has a screen which is small or bigger even – that is where the trouble starts. Now if we were to place a “fixed” website on a tablet, smartwatch, or most commonly smartphone screen, it will certainly face issues that include but maybe not be limited to:

1. Hidden elements
2. Distortion of the layout
3. Only a portion of layout being visible at any given time 
4. Forced horizontal scrolling
5. Broken layouts
6. Slow loading
7. Unwanted link clicks
8. User confusion and/or frustration

Let’s Discuss The Characteristics of A Good Responsive Web Design

Creating a good user experience is the key. Therefore, a good responsive website layout is no doubt important. A good responsive web designer knows that the different elements needed to have your website work on multiple elements instantly. The web designer will work to make certain it applies to adjust a display to perfection by testing the design over and over again on different search engines as well as on different sized devices.

A good responsive web designer can achieve these results through specific characteristics found beneath the initial surface of the web design process. Within responsive design, page elements aren’t sized by pixels, but instead by proportion. This design approach also utilizes fluid grids which make your website’s look from device to device easier to achieve.

Good Characteristics of a Responsive Website – What is a Responsive Website Design?

Here are a few additional points that can best define a responsive design that has functioning characteristics that are instantly visible in your website. These responsive web design characteristics include but may not be limited to:

1. Having a content hierarchy that lets your website decide what appears first based on the user’s device
2. Making your website optimized performance to enhance loading capabilities per device
3. Including mobile-friendly design elements including the creation of the site addressing mouse vs touch compatibility
4. Mobile Friendly Responsive Design elements can increase your Conversion Rates and Lower Bounce Rates 
5. Reap the Benefits of speed and fluidity of responsive design
6. Increase traffic to your local business if it relies on brick and mortar walk ins.
7. Having flexibility among devices increased means that your site will see more mobile traffic.

These factors among others can help your company become a local, regional, or even possible national industry leader, especially if your competition is still using “fixed” sites.

By creating faster responsive web pages with content that is well-optimized can mean an improved user experience will result in lower bounce rates. Most all non-responsive websites face difficulties within user experiences that cause visitors to quickly grow bored or frustrated and thus bounce from the site.

Did you know that low bounce rates can lead to Higher Conversion Rates? It’s true once you’ve been able to get your bounce rates low, your improved user experience will be the driving factor that converts new customers for your brand. Having a site that functions perfectly across all devices is the secret to becoming a brand that users trust over other local competitors. And trust me when bounce rates directly influence search engine rank, so being able to lower your website’s bounce rate means that you are more likely to rank better and get more sales from customers!

A Responsive Design is Easy to Track – What is a Responsive Website Design?

One of the biggest benefits of responsive design is simplified site analytics! That’s right your ability greatly improves to track site traffic and user behavior. Responsive built websites with multiple versions of pages for different devices make analytics much more complex and confusing for search engines.

A confused search engine will lower your page rank based on duplicate pages with the same exact content being shown. Why? Because back early in the web search engines, people would do crazy tricks to improve their search rank. Now, the search engines are ending that by blowing up their page score and making their domain blacklisted. This is a not good for your business at all. Simplify that process with responsive web design.

Give Your Users a Wonderful Experience Across All Platforms and/or Devices!

Your responsive web design is an attainable goal, but one that can only be accomplished with the right team on your side. That would be us – i4 Web Services!  There will always be an ongoing industry-wide debate about when to use responsive vs. mobile design among business to business information as well as smaller businesses operating at the local level. That’s why we track and study the debate to provide the best solutions for our web clients.  Thanks for reading this blog article which answered the question of – what is a responsive website design?  If you enjoyed it read some of our other blog articles now in our blog.

A little About i4 Web Services

We are a web design, advertising, marketing, and SEO company based in Florida. We love creating websites that are compatible with a wide range of accessible devices but importantly get results and that our customers love. Our web clients trust our experience, love that we listen to them, offer honest feedback fearlessly, and have skill to build or rebuild a website to reach their desired audience. Contact us today to schedule your free consultation – call 407-416-1515 today!