The first thing that most clients ask me when they want to know about responsive design, is what advantage it has over traditional \u201cboilerplate\u201d designs.\u00a0 Here are some of the best reasons:<\/p>\n
SEO<\/strong><\/p>\n SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is important to everyone who competes for position in search results.\u00a0 The keywords you use have a unique result in every search engine.\u00a0 \u00a0If you are a photographer and someone searches for \u201cphotographers in Maine\u201d that will yield a different result than say \u201clocal photographers\u201d.\u00a0 Every search engine has its own criteria for what raises or lowers your site in the search results.\u00a0 Responsive web design is a characteristic of your site that means your web pages automatically adapt to different screen sizes.\u00a0 By incorporating responsive design, Google has stated that as of 2015 their algorithm ranks sites with responsive design higher.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Well, one reason is that the majority of web searches are taking place on mobile devices.<\/p>\n Duplicate content<\/strong><\/p>\n Did you know that Google actually penalizes you for \u201cduplicate content\u201d if you have a separate set of web pages for mobile devices?\u00a0 If your website uses .mobile or .mob to define some of your pages, then you do have this double coverage, and Google is ranking you lower for it.<\/p>\n Forward thinking<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The decision to incorporate responsive design is one way to plan ahead for what the web brings next.\u00a0 Most people ten years ago would not have predicted that tablets would be popular, or that desktop computers would rank below mobile devices in terms of user preference for conducting their online browsing and shopping.\u00a0 Who knows that size screen the next device will have, but with responsive design you are in a far better position to adapt to it.<\/p>\n Competitive advantage<\/strong>.<\/p>\n If your site shows up with fonts that are readable on the smartphone without having to go through seven layers of hell to reposition the screen in a way that might give you the information you are looking for without skipping to another page or disappearing completely, that is an advantage.\u00a0 User frustration with your site will usually go unnoticed until someone is actually having a full-blown meltdown.\u00a0 Don\u2019t wait for it to get that far!\u00a0 If you have noticed that your website frustrates you on a mobile device (or anywhere for that matter) then it\u2019s time to make a change.<\/p>\n Choice<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Did you know that with responsive design you can actually create content (photos, text, anything) that only shows up in certain screen sizes?\u00a0 It\u2019s not only about changing the size of things.\u00a0 I have one client who has a different slide show depending on which browser you might be using (Safari or Explorer, or Chome, etc.).\u00a0 Another client has a images that only show up in larger versions of her calendar to save space on small screens where the photo is not as important as the events.<\/p>\n You can get what I call \u201ccookie-cutter\u201d style websites like those offered in basic WordPress packages, and if you design them correctly they can use a theme that has responsive design.\u00a0 If you have such a site that is not responsive, I can help.\u00a0 You can opt to either have the entire site recrafted in a personalized way that is not dependent upon the styles WordPress offers, or if you like the page layouts you already have in WordPress, it may be possible to adopt a responsive theme for far less than it would cost to redesign the whole site.\u00a0 Please call if you have any questions about any of my responsive design advice.<\/p>\n Henry Lyons is the owner of Finestkind Web Design<\/strong> in Dresden, Maine. He can be reached at finestkindwd@gmail.com, or through his website www.fineskindwebdesign.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first thing that most clients ask me when they want to know about responsive design, is what advantage it has over traditional \u201cboilerplate\u201d designs.\u00a0 Here are some of the best reasons: SEO SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is important to everyone who competes for position in search results.\u00a0 The keywords you use have a unique … Continue reading “Five Reasons to Make Your Website Responsive”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finestkindwebdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}