A Shout Out to Businesses and Organizations Who Plan to Design or Re-design Their Website

Before getting started, let’s review why you want to re-design your website. If it’s just because you or your friends feel bored with the current setting, it’s better to spend money elsewhere. If that boredom spreads to your visitors, your website needs a makeover. Most often, appearance is not a big problem if your site is well updated and easy to navigate. For storefront businesses, customers might stop dropping by if parking is a problem or it’s not easier to shop. The same thing happens when your website is not flexible enough. An example would be if clients can’t access your website from devices other than their PC. We are certain that designing or re-designing your site to be responsive and mobile friendly is an obvious path for your future success. Why?

1. Because you need customers

Over the last decade, the way people shop has changed drastically. People no longer have time to wander through store after store for a simple purchase. What they do instead is pick up their phone, check several top search results on Google and make a call.

The number of mobile shoppers is rising continuously.

Mobile phones, especially smartphones, have become a symbol of modern society. Global mobile commerce revenue is expected to triple to about 694 million US dollars from 2016 to 2019. The major drivers are the need for convenience (50% mobile shoppers) and time-saving solutions (46% mobile shoppers). Replacing window walls are touchscreens, where both scalable display and user interaction are of vital importance. Even if e-commerce is not (yet) your field, make sure all your products, services and contact information are neatly sized and placed for customers using portable devices. Sadly, if your business does not adapt, competitors will make profits while you lose sales.

A responsive website reinforces your professionalism.

Customers are likely to question your capabilities when they see a messy website, especially when better choices are readily available. What you want to promise customers is consistency in quality, and it’s a dangerous message if their experience differs across devices. Some rearrangements are needed to fit all contents to a small smartphone or tablet screen, but by no means will you have to do this manually. CMS (Content Management Systems) like WordPress, Drupal, Magento, etc. are available to build your website effectively at a reasonable cost.

Google prefers mobile-friendly websites.

Google strongly recommended responsive design as a necessary approach to expand your business online. A website that adapts to enhance the customer experience will earn a higher search ranking on a desktop search. Additionally, Google search algorithms will devalue unresponsive sites from mobile search results. Meanwhile, in May 2016, Hitwise reported a percentage of 58% for mobile searches of overall search query volume. This number is expected to continue rising in the future. In short, most people are searching (and then shopping) without their desktop, and they will unlikely find any trace of your site in their search engine results.

2. Because you care about customers

According to Sycosure’s survey in early 2015, on average, a visitor spends 58 seconds on a new website. In terms of user annoyance, unresponsive design only loses to lengthy content, pop-up messages and confusing layout. Pinching, zooming or side scrolling chases customers away from the See More buttons, let alone clicking on a Buy button. Just by adopting cross-device web design, you will enjoy a significant decrease in bounce rate (the percentage of visitors exiting within one click) and a gradual increase in your conversion rate (the percentage of visitors clicking Buy).

3. Because you want to save money

Don’t exclude your business from the rising wave of mobile marketing. As 36% of Americans (and still rising) use more than one device to stay connected, your success now depends on your ability to manage customer loyalty in a highly-mobilized environment. Being able to display content effectively is just the start. To actually turn your website into an effective customer magnet, your audience must be able to interact and view your messages or product demonstrations consistently from different platforms.

Without a responsive website, you are losing not only opportunity costs (incurred from unsatisfied multi-platform visitors) but also daily operating costs. Many organizations (we truly hope that this is not your case) are literally wasting resources on two different websites: one main site for desktop visitors and one mobile version. You can detect such sites by the letter “m.” before the main URL. Responsive design, on the other hand, incorporates desktop and mobile display, thereby simplifying management and boosting efficiency. The fact that customers can educate themselves about your products and services on the go will at least help reduce costs for additional reception staff.

To conclude, no matter how big or small your business, investing in a mobile responsive website design or re-design is the smartest way to prepare your organization’s website. You don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to capture your target audience as they spend more and more time on their digital devices. We hope you find this article helpful. If you do, please share it with others. Thank you!