Importance of mobile responsiveness

The concept of mobile responsiveness has been hanging in the air for several decades. However, web developers only started digging deeper into the benefits thereof in the mid-2000s. As more consumers began operating on smartphones, tablets, and laptops, web developers started implementing more flexible layouts.

Before we jump into the reasons why mobile responsiveness is essential, it is crucial to understand what mobile responsiveness is. For a website to be mobile responsive, the layout or content thereof needs to be adaptable based on the screen it is viewed on. Mobile responsiveness tailors your website to be mobile-friendly, this optimizes browsing experiences.

Previously, web developers had to build different sites for different screen sizes. Because of the various device types available today, this time-consuming task is entirely unsuitable.

Generally, four different screen sizes need to respond with each other; these devices are the widescreen desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile device. In this blog, we are going to take a more in-depth look at the importance of mobile responsiveness.

In 2019, there is more mobile traffic than ever before. More than 77% of adults in the US own smartphones. According to statistics, the number of smartphone users has more than doubled since 2011. In 2015, more than half of some top websites’ traffic came from mobile devices. Because of these statistics, it is easy to see why the functionality of adaptable websites is of vital importance. Individual businesses still prefer to have different sites for mobile and desktop devices. Responsiveness is, however, becoming the norm because it is more versatile and cheaper to develop. In the long run, you will have fewer maintenance costs with mobile responsive websites. It is also much less time consuming to create one responsive website than separate stand-alone mobile-applications and standard desktop websites.

Another perk of mobile responsiveness is that it increases the flexibility of text and the layout of images. Effectively, the content of your website should be readable, regardless of the device it is displayed on. Mobile responsiveness allows you to increase the font of your text, as well as increase the spacing between each line of text to ease reading. To change the layout of images can be a bit more challenging. However, scaling and cropping images are part of the mobile responsive experience. Images can also disappear, depending on what is crucial to the mobile website.

More than 55% of social media browsing happens on mobile devices. Sharing a link to your website on one of the numerous social media platforms can result in more traffic on your website. Therefore, having a mobile responsive website should be implemented as part of your social marketing strategy. A mobile responsive website will increase the number of views on your website, and you will be able to get a better grasp on the sharing of your content. Mobile responsiveness will, therefore, lead to increased conversion rates. If your mobile website is not responsive, there is a 61% chance that visitors will leave. However, 67% of visitors are more likely to convert if your website is easy to navigate on mobile devices.

Ethan Marcotte, an independent web designer, said that responsive web design offers us a way forward, finally allowing us to design for the ebb and flow of things. Mobile responsiveness made it easier to access information, this being beneficial to both businesses and consumers. A mobile responsive website will ensure that companies benefit from the fast-growing online audience.

Furthermore, mobile responsiveness improves accessibility to websites, making it easy for consumers to explore the online world from their mobile devices. Everyone wins with mobile responsiveness!