Why You Need A Responsive Website For Your Business
With the world becoming a more mobile-friendly place by the day, whether that means paying for dinner with a tap of a phone, showing flight tickets via a code on your phone screen, or buying your weekly food shop through a supermarket app, online touchpoints are now important than ever before.
As a business owner, we know you understand how important it is to have an online presence. But is simply owning and operating a website enough anymore?
This article looks at the power of your website in converting visitors to customers, and how to make sure that every corner of your website is optimised and responsive.
What Is A Responsive Website?
Have you ever visited a website on your smartphone and found yourself having to zoom in on the text in order to make it large enough to read?
Or have you visited a homepage only to find that half the logo is missing, seemingly disappearing into the void of thin air around your phone?
These are examples of non-responsive websites – and demonstrate the number one obstacle for modern business conversion rates. If a customer cannot easily operate and navigate your website from any device, they will quickly lose interest and look elsewhere. Because if you’re not doing it, you can be sure your competitors are.
A responsive website is one that has been optimised to work and adapt to any and all devices. Text sizes change, buttons shift and shrink, and image dimensions are changed in order to fit onto the active screen, delivering the same high-quality experience to users – regardless of where they are logging in from.
You could say that having a responsive website is crucial if you want to enjoy business success – and without being dramatic, you would be right!
With that being said, what are the benefits that come with a responsive website, and how do you get there?
Why You Need A Responsive Website
“The customer is king” – no doubt you’ve heard this phrase before. So, what does it mean?
It means that everything businesses do should revolve around the end customer – from defining their problem or pain point, to introducing them to the solution and letting them know exactly why you are best placed to deliver that solution. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling a product or a service, the quickest way to convert customers is to identify their problem and hand them the solution on a platter – and that starts and ends with customer service.
- Accessibility. Your website is essentially the digital face of your entire brand or business concept. It is often the first impression that customers will get of you and can very quickly tell them if they want to engage with you or not. A responsive website presents the kind of first impression that you can be proud of and invites customers to engage, browse and buy no matter where they are.
- Google! Like it or not, Google is the powerhouse that we all bow down to, and so everything we do as businesses has to be tailored to the demands of Google and its website audits. The easiest way to look at this is to know that Google will always side with the end-user, and so ensuring that your website is as optimised for their experience as possible will hold you in good stead to be ranked well and displayed as part of a search results list in your industry.
- The rise of mobile. Did you know that mobile devices have 56% of the worldwide market share? As the rise of mobile continues to gain traction, the use of desktop computers (once the lifeline of internet connection) is on the decline – owing to its lack of innovation and inability to adapt at the same rate as a mobile device. For businesses, this means that if your website is not responsive to mobile users, you are alienating and potentially pushing away more than half of your potential audience and customer base.
- User experience. Improve the user experience, and you will not only see more conversion but also more satisfied customers, better reviews, and a greater reputation. Don’t be the company that lets down a great product or service with a poor online experience!
Things You Can Do Right Now
The responsiveness of your website all rests on how user friendly the site is across multiple devices, so it follows that the best thing you can do is regularly check out your own website from the perspective of a customer, across a multitude of devices.
We recommend starting at the very beginning, by defining the most common touchpoints and introductions that customers have to your business or brand and taking it from there. An example could be mapping the customer journey from a social media post to your website link. From there you can identify any pop-ups and obstacles they are asked to overcome, and then see how clear and obvious your proposition and CTA is on each device.
Checking your content and website responsiveness should also include testing all your buttons and clickable links on each device, to ensure that the links are correct and the load times for your different pages are fast enough to keep your bounce rate as low as possible. Be aware that a 5 second load time can lead to around a 38% bounce rate, meaning that if customers can’t get the information they want instantly, they are highly likely to click away or end their journey early.
Other areas to focus on during your checks include:
- Font colours and sizes, and general readability
- Image load times and video load times
- Smooth and easy navigation from page to page – including all clickable links
- Pop-ups – how many, are they responsive, do they interrupt the customer journey at the right time / prevent them from leaving
- Interactivity – are all the actions on your website easy to find and use
The Takeaway...
A responsive website isn’t just a good idea – it’s integral to the success and growth of your business. Businesses should be as flexible as possible when it comes to web design and implementation, constantly aware of new devices and upgrades which are released on an almost daily basis and instil changes which can mean the difference between a good experience and a broken customer journey.
Being responsive means being accessible, inviting, and customer-friendly – no matter how or where they find your business. For more information on how to get your business up, running, and earning money online, head to Why Choose Us? | getyouonline.co.uk
