Jaswinder Singh
Our generation has witnessed how technology crawled into our lives and has embarked on its significant presence. With the progressing and fast pacing world, our everyday life is compacting from tiny to even tinier gadgets and somehow unknowingly these devices and cell phones have become a vital part of our lives. In late 2016, even Google, the biggest search engine dropped its mobile-first index announcement.
Ever Since there have been many theorizing, conjectures, rampant speculation, panic, and confusion about Mobile First Indexing. And many questions have been arising, Will desktop users get mobile websites? Will websites without mobile-friendly designation suffer? And one of the most important questions is, what made Google take such a huge step in considering Smartphones to such an extent?
No matter what your website does or what it sells. Regardless of a site’s needs, one feature that is critical to all websites' success is mobile-friendliness and responsive design support.
So, What exactly a “Responsive Web Design” is?
Responsive Web design is the approach that makes sure that the developers don't have to go through the misery of making different websites according to the screen size and resolution. It makes sure that website's development and design responds accurately according to the device usage by the user and the environment based on screen size, platform and orientation.
The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and a wicked use of CSS media queries. As the user switches from their iPad to macbook or laptop, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size, and scripting abilities. In other words, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the user’s preferences. This would eliminate the need for a different design and development phase for each new gadget on the market.
Also Read: KNOW ALL ABOUT GOOGLE’S NEW MOBILE-FIRST INDEXING
Few popular stats that back Google's Mobile First Indexing and explains the usage and importance of mobile phones in our lives:
In February 2017, mobile devices accounted for 49.74% of web page views worldwide.
America and Europe have the highest mobile broadband subscription penetration rate, around 78.2% and 76.6% respectively. The global average stood at nearly 50% in 2016.
Global mobile commerce revenue has forecasted to increase from an estimate of just over 170 billion U.S. dollars to nearly 694 billion U.S. dollars in 2019.
In February 2017, the retailer’s app was accessed by 68.78 million people on a monthly basis, reaching 40 percent of mobile users in the country.
All these statistics and facts stated above portrays the significance of Smartphones in our lives but these stats are just for Smartphones with the changing world there are many digital devices have come into existence, Which makes adaptability or responsiveness of any website for various devices and especially cell phones a must.
So, Why Responsive Design is an important feature to be incorporated in all the websites?
Save Time and Cost on Website Management
A primary benefit of adopting a responsive design is that it takes less time than creating additional stand-alone websites, which has been the traditional approach. Testing across a number of websites also increases your development, support and maintenance overhead. Making website responsive is much easier than to managing different websites for different devices. A single administrative interface which can easily be optimized, using layout and workflow tools to manage the correct content or site templates that are being used for different devices is far more pocket-friendly and time-saving.
Increase Your Website's Presence in the Search Engine
Google suggests that mobile phone optimized, responsive websites are featured prominently in localised search results. Additionally, advantages of responsive design are that fewer resources can be wasted in low-level duplication of content across many websites for different devices, the content need only be applied to a single website, increasing the chances of a higher search engine ranking of your website.
Google adding "Mobile Friendly" tags to those websites, so as they can pop first in the search engine. Well, as of in April 2015, the value and seriousness of having a responsive website is actually started being considered when Google began rewarding websites that were built responsively for multi-device support.
By rewarding these websites that are mobile-friendly, there isn’t any doubt that Google is effectively penalizing those that are not, making responsive web design an important factor in SEO strategy even.
Enhance your Website's Reach
Having a website that is compatible with all the major devices make it reach to a wider extent and can be reached anytime, anywhere "on the go". If some query browses your website looking for some specific feature or service but when later opens it by some other device find that the website is disoriented, he will likely to leave the website and to take his business elsewhere. By ensuring consistency of information across all devices, but with a layout and experience suited to each individual screen size, you do your best to support your customers and do not give them any reason to abandon your site halfway through their overall experience.
Future Prospects
There are many devices being introduced every day. So it is important for the future prospects to make such a responsive website that can suit all the. Our future would surely be dominated by digital devices. So to make your website’s presence sound, we should make sure that your website is adaptable to all the forthcoming devices. Making a responsive website is a must in context of this tech savvy turning world where new gadgets are introduced everyday. Responsive Web design is the approach that makes sure that the developers don't have to go through the misery of making different websites according to the screen size and resolution. So it’s better to have a website that can adapt on all screens than to having different websites for different devices.
RW Infotech is a tech savvy and trend setting web development firm in India, we make sure to follow all forth coming trends and to set milestones with our talented bunch of Web Developers/ Designers, UI/UX experts, digital marketing leaders.