Published:

06/21/2014 02:48am

Having a Responsive Website - What Does That Mean For Your Business Today

If you can remember way back to the beginning, you'd probably agree that websites have come a long way since their inception, and so has the technology being used to access them. Developing a website is an important marketing asset for your business, but you should know that customers have certain expectations that your site should meet. One such expectation is having a responsive website.

What Is A Responsive Website?

Whenever a customer attempts to access your website from a laptop, phone, tablet or alternative route, your site attempts to display the files onto the screen. The problem is that when someone tries to look at your site from a 4-inch smartphone screen, it might not look as visually appealing on the phone as it does on the computer.

Responsive web design is an approach to creating your website so that all of your information and data is easy to access and appears professional from wherever mobile device a person might be using. Designing a website that is mobile compatible might display a much narrower view on someone's phone with larger buttons to be able to get back and forth, but would retain the proportions on any full screen computer.

Responsive designs also go beyond the aesthetics of a website and it addresses the functionality of that website. You want to make sure that your website addresses the following common problems when designing a responsive website:

• A minimum amount or no scrolling at all is necessary

• Your website should load rapidly and should be easy to use

• Visitors using normal computers and mobile devices can properly browse and your website

• Your website should be optimized for all screen resolutions

In order for customers to take advantage of your website to reap the full benefits of hosting that site, you should make sure that your business website is fully responsive.

Why Is This Important For My Business Today?

Think of it this way. If you tried opening a door but it wouldn't open, would you keep trying or would you give up and just leave? More and more customers are browsing websites and looking up your business on the go. Anyone looking for a specific service or product on their phone that comes across your website won't stick around to do business with you if the "door" to your company won't open or it's too difficult to operate.

A study released by the Pew Research Center suggests that over half of all young adults browse exclusively from their mobile phones. Not implementing these approaches to your site design would cost a significant amount of business revenue and traffic that could send customers away to the competition.

One thing to point out is that if you already have a website, it is relatively simple to fix this problem and to make your website responsive. You have one of these options that you could choose. You can either pay to have someone make the changes which could cost you anywhere from $50 and up, you can change the entire theme of your website, or better yet, you could change up your CSS stylesheet to include media queries for mobile devices. Performing the change yourself is not as bad as it might seem, but you might want to leave it up to a professional if you haven't done much work on your site yourself. The simplest way to make the change if you have a word press site is to install a plug-in that will automatically reformat your site information based on the type of mobile device, screen size and resolution.

Ask your webmaster about this and once the plug-in is up and loaded, you'll keep your mobile visitors happy and on your site a lot longer.

Pamela Wigglesworth is a Singapore-based American corporate trainer, speaker and Managing Director of Experiential Hands-on Learning, a training and development company. A resident of Asia for over 20 years, she works with companies across multiple industries to enhance their branding, marketing communications, personal communication skills and effectiveness in the workplace.

To learn more about Pamela, visit the Experiential website at www.experiential.sg or email her at courses@experiential.sg