In the current situation, responsive web design is not a luxury but a necessity. Mobile has emerged as a significant component for web browsing and digital commerce with over 60% of queries within search engines coming from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Despite this, many brands are unable to deliver a user-friendly mobile experience.
Top 5 benefits of Responsive Web Design
1. Mobile First
Responsive web design is as important as search engine optimization and quality content. As of April 2018, Google has implemented the use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal and has been forthright with their move to a mobile first index. This is means that if your site is NOT optimized for mobile with other things being equal, the competitor’s site will outrank you in their index.
2. Eliminate Duplicate Content
You may or may not be guilty of this, but many companies have been utilizing both the desktop and mobile version. This sometimes leads to duplicate content across the web. Remember, to Google bots, any distinct URL is considered a unique page/site.
For example:
- yourcompany.com
- m.yourcompany.co
In this, one version is for website and other is for mobile. Google crawler’s do not understand that they are the same brands and maybe hit with duplicate content penalties unless other measures are taken. Working from a ‘mobile first’ ideology allows you to consolidate your content to a single unique URL.
3. Lower bounce rate
User behaviour and visitor statistics on the pages matter. Google’s goal is to make sure that the sites offer the best user experience possible, for each search query, rank the highest. Some indicators of a poor experience may include :
- High bounce rates
- Low time spent on the page/site
- Low number of page views and clicks
A properly optimized mobile website will be intuitive, engaging and present and provide information in an easy to read and digest way leading to increased interactions and time spent on pages.
4. Faster loading speed
According to Hubspot and Elixir Web Solutions, one best seo company in Delhi, if your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, you may lose about 40-50% of the visitors. Improving the page load speed has a good impact on the customer’s perceived customer experience on your site. Google has been very public with the fact that load speed is a ranking signal in their algorithms.
5. User Experience
Ensuring that the user experience is a priority comes down to the structure, navigation, ease of access and mobile friendliness. The responsive web design makes your site mobile friendly and prioritizes both readability and navigation for visitors. Google recognizes usability by looking into a few key metrics such as the time spent on a webpage. While no one knows the exact weighting of such performance indicators in the algorithms, they most certainly play a role in how your site ranks. The best seo company in Delhi says that user experience, and user interface, should be taken as seriously as other traditional on and off-page SEO efforts.
Conclusion
With a rapid growth in mobile devices and use, the responsibility lays with improving upon and implementing mobile-friendly responsive designs and architecture. It is extremely important to understand that many benefits come from a better user experience which will have a positive impact on search engine positioning and visibility. Planning goes a long way so craft out your structure and media ahead of time. For each, address their respective impact on everything from bounce rate, to SEO and user experience. Doing this will begin to establish a strong responsive foundation from which to continually build and improve upon as necessary.
