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The world of website design is a moving target and requires constant vigilance to keep pace with changing standards. If you haven’t made major changes to your website in over a year – you’re not only losing the race on the internet – you’ve probably dropped out without knowing about it.

Google is a mean and angry overseer of the internet. It determines your internet success in marketing your products and services in many different ways – not the least of which is whether your website is worth presenting to the world with their search engine. With Google’s command of over 70% of all internet searches, your website had better be dressed and ready for battle on their terms.

This series of posts will cover those critical items that can make or break a website’s performance but which are being extensively ignored by many small industrial firms, many without internal resources to be up-to-date with the latest dictates of what defines even a minimal performance internet marketing presence.

Responsive Web Design – Ignore It At Your Own Risk

While this series of posts are not necessarily in any order of importance, this one may be the exception. That’s because the most dramatic change in website design in the past 5 years has been responsive web design.

Essentially, responsive web design is a design discipline that furnishes the ability to have a functional website no matter what device is viewing it. In other words – a website that is fully functional on a desktop, an iPad, or a smartphone. Details on the specifics can be seen at a previous writeup.

If you don’t think a responsive website is important, consider this: our tracking of dozens of industrial websites over the past year shows most sites are getting over 30% of their “hits” from mobile devices – many of which are smartphones. This is a three fold increase from two years ago and, while less than the general search market, tracks well with overall trends on the internet. Yes, people in the manufacturing sector are using mobile technology!

So, the questions are – do you want to ignore 30% of the incoming potential of your website by showing your visitors a non-usable, unfriendly website? Are you forcing your new potentials to look elsewhere? Do you think they will wait and check your site out on a desktop? What would you do?

Chances are you are fully adept at mobile technology yourself. You’re readily using it for searches for all types of services and products. You know what happens when you hit a website that does not work with your needs when needed. Yet, you think your website doesn’t matter?

Even worse news – Google is now favoring websites that are mobile friendly. After all, their focus is on returning content that best serves their users. Why would they want to return websites that are non-usable on a smartphone if the client is using such a device? Already, we are tracking results that vary depending on the device used. If you website is non-responsive to the device used, you eventually will not be showing up in searches that require responsive results.

How much of the search market are you ready to ignore before you decide to address the issue or responsive web design?

Responsive Web Design vs. Mobile Site

Be aware that responsive web design is not the same as a mobile site version of your website. A mobile site is basically a copy of your website, where the server delivers an optimized web page that’s smaller and easier to navigate for people on mobile devices – usually smartphones.

A mobile site requires a different domain, such as mobile.yourdomain.com. As a result, this dilutes your domain, divides your SEO and hurts your organic search traffic. As it is essentially another site, it requires separate website management and updates. Mobile sites may require complete reworking in order to stay current with next-generation phones and mobile browsers. In total, separate sites mean higher expense, less reliability.

Responsive web design requires no additional maintenance as the content is the same across all devices and changes with the technology. As it functions the same across all devices, your website presents unified SEO and capabilities to all users and is the preferred platform to make sure you deliver what is needed on the internet.

Is your website Responsive to your potential clients? RADX offers a full range of internet services including fully responsive web design and webmaster services. Contact us for a free review of what we can do for you.