This article was published on May 25th, 2014
There is a new buzz word in web development. It’s called RESPONSIVE and whilst you may wonder what this word has to do with websites, if you own a smart phone or any other electronic device and use it to browse the internet, then it is more than likely that you are already aware of its implications.
Responsive web design is the practice of building a website suitable to work on every device and every screen size, no matter how large or small, mobile or desktop. Responsive web design is focused around providing an intuitive and gratifying experience for everyone. Desktop computer and cell phone users alike all benefit from responsive websites.
Source: Responsive Web Design – Learn to Code Advanced HTML & CSS
What that means is simply that if a website is NOT responsive, then it is likely that you will have problems reading it on your device.
The illustration above shows exactly the implications of a non responsive design, and the owner of the site featured in the image have since made the wise choice had had their website redesigned to comply with new browsing technologies.
To show the content that you spend a lot of time and effort creating so that everybody can enjoy it is one thing, and perhaps the most important one. But is becomes even more crucial when you consider that the “responsiveness’ of a website is become a factor in the multitude of algorithms search engine apply in their ranking efforts.
In other words, if your site is not responsive, all things being equal, it will be devalued in the eyes of the search engine when compared with another site who is.
Google is changing how it ranks non-responsive websites
If your site is not smarphone friendly, then you should make it a priority to ensure that it is:
From the 21st April 2015, websites that are responsive will be ranked higher by Google than ones that are not.
To change your site from a non-responsive to responsive format can be as easy as 1 2 3 if you operate your site on a content management platform and use the right technology (theme) or a whole lot more complicated depending on how it was designed in the first place.
If you are not sure whether your site is responsive or not, try and view it on your cell phone. If you can all all of its content then you’re fine. If not, then you might have a problem…
And we can help you. 🙂