With the emergence of mobile phones, tablets and different kind of mobile devices on the global market, there was a need for responsive websites design to be adapted to these devices. What is actually a responsive website design? We can describe it as a combination of flexible grids specially design to automatically resize, hide, shrink or enlarge a website and the main goal is to make it look good on all web browsers (Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera) and on mobile devices as well (mobile devices, tablets, etc.).
Today, the number of visits and sales over the Internet recorded by using mobile devices overcomes the number of visits and sales received by using desktop computers. We are aware that website owners rapidly change their current website designs and optimize them into responsive websites ready for mobile devices and tablets. No one else is in the dilemma whether the website should be adapted to mobile phones and tablets, but there is only a question what is better, what is convenient and, of course, what is profitable at the end.
There are several main reasons why is a good idea to optimize and make websites responsive. We will list the most important advantages of responsive websites in relation to a single mobile version.
Advantages of responsive websites
According to official surveys, Google has over 80% stake in all searches on the Internet and as such, it is extremely important to evaluate what is good and the best practice. Let’s consider that our main goal is to optimize our website for the search engine, and then it’s clear why our recommendation is one of the arguments as an advantage to the responsive website.
When we compare responsive website and website specially designed for mobile devices only, we can say that the main difference between them is that responsive website has only one URL address and it only displays the content from that website’s URL address and based on the detected device screen size it will display a different design for different devices, while on the other hand, the website specially design for mobile devices has to be made separately.
That means the user has to be redirected to another URL address, which leads to duplication of the website content. Of course, this can be resolved by additional tags but there is a huge possibility that the mobile version of the website could be damaging for the main website.
Duplication of content can have negative effects from the point of SEO optimization. Why? Because the users will be automatically redirected to another website with a new URL address where we will have a completely different website with the new SEO settings, if any exists, of course. As more and more users are using mobile phones and tablets to search and surf the internet, there is a need for websites to be mobile responsive and compatible to display the website’s content properly on their mobile device.
It is not mandatory for the website to be a mobile responsive or to be adapted for mobile devices and tablets, but it is certainly a big plus when it comes to optimizing the website for search engines. You can still, find a lot of websites that are not mobile optimized but they are still on the first page on Google. The main reasons for this are other factors that influence the ranking of the websites on search engines. The huge problem that you could have when you do not have a mobile responsive website is that when users access to your website from their mobile devices, they will for sure leave your website immediately because the website itself is unpredictable and difficult to navigate.
That’s the reason why your website creates a large “bounce rate”, which means that users quickly leave your website and these are signals for the search engine that your website is not relevant to end users. The main goal of website optimization is not just attracting users but also keeping them on your website which will constantly return back to your website.