Responsive web design has been critically important since 2016, if not before that. If the web design of your site isn’t responsive, then it puts you at a disadvantage, regardless of what industry you’re in. Those disadvantages include missing out on users who find your site on mobile devices, as well as ranking as highly as you could. After all, responsiveness is a ranking factor. However, with the right kind of web design, your website can climb the Google rankings while drawing in new customers/clients and even keeping them.

What Does it Mean for Your Web Design to Be “Responsive?”

Simply put,  by making your web design responsive, you give your website the best chance to connect to more customers. For the sake of simplicity, “responsiveness” is all about “mobile-friendliness.” You want your site to be as mobile-friendly (i.e. “responsive”) as possible. That means that your site changes (or responds) based upon the needs of the device that it’s opening on. A good way to think of it: it’s basically an introduction to your website, to your company. If you’ve read our blogs here, then you’ve learned all about advanced SEO tactics, ways to improve your content, optimize your website, and more. However, if your website doesn’t load in such a way that people can read your site, the odds of them coming back to your site are minimal. Moreover, if your site isn’t navigational once it does load so that people can stay on it and consume your content, then you really can’t take advantage of everything else, all of the other hard work you’ve done. Responsive web design is foundational. Without it, a website is like a house without a door.

Why This is Important

To build on what’s said above, web design is, in large part, about credibility. When you see a company’s website, you, very often, know whether they’re “credible” or not. In this context, we’re defining “credible” as “someone that you would trust to provide goods and/or services for your money.” However, if a site doesn’t load entirely on a device, then this erodes credibility. People intrinsically understand how important web design is, even if they don’t put it in so many words. Google also understands how important web design that’s responsive is. That’s why it’s one of the major ranking factors for Google’s SEO. For much of this year, Google has said that mobile-friendly websites rank better than ones that strictly work on desktops. This won’t go back. Without web design that’s truly responsive, you’ll struggle to grow your ranking (or maintain what you’ve got) going forward. Websites are, essentially, designed twice. Once for desktop and once for mobile. “Mobile” in this context doesn’t just mean “phones.” It can also mean tablets, laptops, or just about any other kind of device that websites could load on.

The Three Principles of Responsive Web Design

For many, good web design may feel like an “I’ll know it when I see it” kind of thing. However, there are some principles to keep in mind when trying to make a site that’s truly responsive.

• Flexible Grids

What that means is resizing the content of your website to fit the screen, any screen. Through “relative sizing,” they’ll eschew pixels for images, instead of using percentages, CSS, and more. That way, your site will fit best on any site.

• Flexible Media

Speaking of CSS, CSS overflow and scaling can help to make your images load differently and properly, depending on the size of the screen they load on. This “flexible media” principle makes it possible for your media to load exactly how you want it to.

• Media Queries

These make it so that your website can detect the device it’s loading on. Thus, it can fit the page to the screen. As the screen size expands or otherwise changes, the page adjusts accordingly.

Web Design Professionals for Your Most Responsive Website

It’s very easy to say that your website is “responsive enough.” “Oh, it loads well enough on just about any device. I mean, it’s not always great, but it’s mostly good.” In many ways, however, this is an arm’s race. If it comes down to your site versus a competitor that is more easily navigated on any kind of device, you could find yourself losing business. There is a solution. Here at Website Depot, we’ve helped so many folks to make their websites more responsive. Then, we work to maintain it, so that it’s always as responsive as you want it to be. To schedule a free consultation with our professionals, call (888) 477-9540.   About the author: Website Depot Inc, is a full-service digital marketing agency. Website Depot was founded and incorporated in May 2012 in the state of California, with a primary office in Van Nuys. After fast and rapid growth, we have settled in Silver Lake, Los Angeles and later on Expended into Atwater Village, Los Angels, next to Glendale.