The mobile revolution is here! Did you know there are over 4 billion smartphones in the world? 70% of the UK population owns one, and 32% of them use their phones to buy online at least once a month.

2014 marks a turning point, being the first year that mobile devices account for more internet usage than laptops and desktop computers.

In other words, if your site isn’t optimised for mobile browsing, and the wide number of devices that encompasses, you’re potentially alienating a massive (and growing) audience.

Responsive is an investment in your website’s future
New devices are being launched or announced all the time. And no-one knows what the next generation of devices will look like. Already we see a range of screens from pocket size to mini-laptop, and everything in between. Not to mention the different resolutions within those sizes.

Developing a separate mobile site just doesn’t make sense any more. It’s not a good use of your time or money. Because once your website has been modified or redesigned to be responsive, the hard work is done. For existing and new devices, responsive layouts look forward, not back.

And if a new device appears on the scene that doesn’t play nicely with your website, it’s not a lot of work to put it right.

Responsive puts you ahead of the competition
This will vary from industry to industry, but the chances are, some (or most) of your main competitors will not yet have responsive websites. Which means they’re probably alienating a continually-growing group of prospects. Prospects who could become your customers.

If you decide to wait until everyone around you has a responsive website, you could be missing out on a golden opportunity to recruit new customers, and gain a significant advantage over your peers.

Enjoy lower maintenance costs
It’s not rocket science: a single site is faster and more cost-effective to maintain than a mobile and a desktop site together.

Imagine having to consider every change twice when updating your site, when you could just do it once? If you already have a dedicated mobile site, going responsive will likely pay for itself in reduced maintenance costs over a couple of years.

Responsive websites are better for SEO
Search Engine Optimisation is the most difficult balancing act website owners have to perform. Despite their being a lot of conflicting views over the best ways to achieve results in the search engine results pages (SERPs), one thing’s for certain: a single responsive website is better than separate sites for mobile and desktop.

Having a single domain, and a single address for each page makes the job of SEO so much easier. And it means you can concentrate all your ‘link juice’ in a single site.

And if that wasn’t enough, Google actually recommends responsive web design, and favours responsive websites in its results pages.

More shares, sales & enquiries
The rise of mobile devices has been mirrored by the rise of social networks. And there’s no coincidence there. With the advent of Facebook & Twitter mobile apps (and loads more), people are spending more and more time interacting online – using their smartphones.

Which leads to one of the responsive website’s most important features. It’s platform agnostic. In other words, if I’m on my desktop, and I share your responsive site on facebook, my friend may click the link on his smartphone, and see a version of your site that’s optimised for his device.

Conversely, my friend on his smartphone may link to a site’s mobile version on his facebook page, but when I click on it using my desktop computer, I see a hard-to-use, tiny website. I’d need to be really interested to find the desktop version rather than simply click away.

And of course the same is true for making sales and generating enquiries. If your website doesn’t make good use of a device’s screen, it’s broken as far as users are concerned. And no-one wants to do business with a broken website.

Especially when your competitor has a smart, user-friendly responsive one…

Interested in going responsive?
Give me a call on 07702153213 and I will happy to have a chat with you.