What is Responsive Website Design?
In the past, before the advent of mobile devices, people only surf the Internet using a laptop or a desktop. In those days, web designers only need to make sure that the website looks good on a desktop. But with the popularity of mobile devices, more and more people are using their mobile phones or tablet to surf the web. And that’s when web designers and users discover that what looked like a great we page on desktop no longer looks great on a headphone. Part of the image may be cropped off or it becomes difficult to navigate. The user needs to continuously scroll the screen left and right to read the content. All this makes a user frustrated when he visits a non-responsive website.How does a non-responsive and a responsive website look like?
To give you an idea, let’s look at the images below to compare how a non-responsive website looks on a desktop and how it looks like on a mobile device. Here, we are at the website of a local van rental company in Singapore called Siang Hock. The image on the left shows what it would look like on a desktop. The image on the left shows how it looks like on an iPhone.

How do I check if my website is responsive?
Here’s a simple and crude way. Open up the URL on your laptop. Do not maximise the screen. Next, with the mouse on the right side of the page, resize the window and see if the elements on the website adjust their relative position to suit the space available to display the content. A responsive website design will allow the content element to re-adjust to suit the screen size whereas a non-responsive one will not. Alternatively you could use an online responsive page checker. Once there you just need to enter your URL and hit the GO button. You can then check how the particular website looks on the different screen sizes from a 27″monitor down to an iPhone in both landscape and portrait positions.
3 Reasons Why You Need A Responsive Website Design
As smartphones and tablets become the new trend when surfing the internet, so is the importance of having mobile-friendly sites. If search engine optimization (SEO) would become one of your key elements in your internet marketing endeavors, a mobile-friendly site becomes more essential than you've originally intended it to be.
According to SEO services consultants, in 2014, mobile sales have already surpassed desktop sales and it's been predicted that mobile internet usage would overtake desktop internet usage in the next decade. It's logical that mobile search would surely surpass desktop search at some point in the near future as well.
If you're not all of that convinced that your website needs to be optimized for mobile use, here are reasons why you should take the next step and do it:
Google Highly Recommends That You Do
When Google speaks, search marketers should listen closely. They stated that a responsive web design is the recommended mobile configuration, and even went as far as saying that a responsive web design is one of the industry's best practices.
In April 2014, Google explicitly mentioned that they will take website responsiveness as a factor in their ranking algorithm and that they will penalise non-responsive website with a lower ranking in the search engine results. You can read more here.
Google said such things because a responsive design has a single URL but with the same HTML, regardless of which device, which would make it a whole lot easier and more effective for Google to crawl, index and arrange content. In addition, Google prefers responsive web designs due to the content living on a single site and a single URL is much easier for users to share, interact and link to than content placed on a separate mobile website.
A Single Website, A Wide Array of Devices
One of the most attractive features of having a responsive web design is that it can provide a much greater user-experience over a myriad of devices and screen sizes. This is one crucial characteristic you need to bear in mind, since it's impossible to know every device and screen size your users will be using to search on.
Furthermore, a website that will work well despite these variables will offer a much better and more consistent user-experience than a separate mobile site that's manufactured for a particular device and screen size.
It's A Lot Easier to Manage
Having two websites, a mobile website and a desktop version, would require you to have separate SEO campaigns for each one. Managing a single site for desktop and mobile use is much easier than managing two web pages and two SEO campaigns simultaneously. This is one great perk that a responsive web design can offer you.
With that being stated, there are benefits when it comes to having a mobile-specific SEO campaign, like keyword optimization that's more likely to be searched when someone is using those keywords when they're searching using their mobile devices.
Overall, having a responsive web design for your lead generation services endeavors would definitely give you a boost in both your sales and profits. Today's generation is already on mobile and people are searching things on the internet while on the go. Therefore, having a responsive web design is more essential now than it was before
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