The rise of mobile technology has uncovered an interesting challenge for marketers today. For most companies, taking their business and shrinking it down to minuscule screens in a user friendly way is hard to do, but is a good idea.
The cure? Responsive web design. It is quickly carving its way into the minds of SEO marketers and for good reason. If you don’t know what it is already, it is simply the ability for your designed web page to be able to functionally work and proportionally snap to whichever device it is accessed on. Why is it so sweet? I’ll tell you why.
It Produces More Sales!
If users regularly visit your classic website, they learn where things are placed in your web design. They know how to find your blog section, the home screen and most importantly the “buy now” buttons. If you don’t have a fully responsive website, you may lose functionality and consistency with certain devices. This causes confusion in the consumers mind when visiting your site to buy on mobile, which can lead to lost sales.
It’s Cheaper… Depending On Your Mobile Needs
If you are looking to extend your SEO strategy across a huge range of devices and tablets, creating multiple mobile sites to react with each device independently can be development nightmare. With exception to massive content sites and super interactive desktop websites (it might make sense to do this with these sites), one responsive design site will get you on all devices with one design. Granted, one website designed in a responsive manner will cost you quite a bit more than one basic desktop site. Comparing the cost and time of developing independent sites versus responsive design would still be worth mulling over.
It’s The Cure To The Device Screen Madness
It seems like every day there is a new tablet or smartphone upgrade with new resolutions and screen sizes. With responsive design, you not only get your best site design on all of these that exist, but you also get it on all of the device models to come. This of course means consistent UI’s and that again means more sales. Who doesn’t want that?
It’s Way Easier For You To Manage
What’s easier to manage, one SEO campaign or two? You can save a lot of time here with only the management of only one ad campaign. If you are using responsive design, your campaign will not only still have your keywords and terms for desktop search, but your local search and mobile keywords can be integrated into the SEO campaign and translated across all of those devices.
Google Wants It
If you have a website, odds are you want to be found through Google. If you want to be found in Google, you need great SEO strategy. If you want great SEO strategy, Google recommends responsive web design. It’s pretty simple and easy to see how it helps out Google too. Their algorithms are trained to direct people to the best website. If you have multiple websites for your service that are very similar (be it across multiple devices), Google might not always spit your best site out to the user. With people sharing websites so frequently, on many devices, it gets hard for Google to reference which device they got to your site from and could show new users the wrong version of your site. You don’t have to go with responsive design, but when Google recommends it, I’d do it.