How many times have you looked at a website on a mobile device and been frustrated with having to scroll all over the place to find what you are looking for? This is because most websites have been designed with desktop computers in mind. As a result, the viewing experience on a mobile device is compromised. With the number of mobile devices increasing daily, web developers are now having to enter into the world of mobile websites.
It has become vital that a website should be mobile friendly. Mobile means not just phones, but tablets and other mobile devices. This means that web developers need to build quality designed websites that can also be easily read on small screens. Enter the mobile website.
Mobile websites are typically just a simplified, smaller version of the main website. High resolution images and slow-loading graphics are reduced to enable quicker load times.
Why is Responsive Web Design important?
A Responsive Web Designed mobile website will adjust itself according to the screen size or device it is being viewed on. Take a normal desktop website. Now reduce the viewing pane to half size to view another document alongside. To navigate around the reduced web page, you have to keep scrolling left and right to take in all the page. This is frustrating and time consuming. Yet this is just how it is with a Non Responsive Website viewed on a mobile device.
A responsive site can be tailored to specific devices as well as adapting to varying size screens. Part of the attraction of responsive web design is that one site can function across all platforms. This means there is usually only one URL for your website. This makes updating your site effortless, as typically only one site needs to be addressed.
Why should I consider getting a Responsive Website?
A responsive website creates a user-friendly viewing experience for your clients. It also keeps Google happy. Google has a web crawling robot (Googlebot) looking for webpage content. Googlebot’s results will enable Google to rank your website accordingly for search engine optimisation.
Because you only have one URL, Googlebot only needs to crawl your pages once to look for content. Having redirection URLs would result in it crawling multiple times to retrieve your content. This helps Google index more of your site’s content and keep it up to date. A single URL also helps Google assign indexing properties for the content.
So, if you want your users to have a pleasant viewing experience, and you want your website to rank highly in search engine results you should seriously consider a mobile website.
