As more people use smartphones and tablets to browse the web, responsive web design is becoming an essential part of online sales. By creating a website that looks great and works flawlessly across multiple devices, you can reach your target audience and improve your sales results. You should know how to build an online shop that generates sales.
Understand What Responsive Web Design Is
Responsive web design is a design approach used to create websites that adjust their layout and content to different screen sizes, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Responsive web design means making a website that looks good and works well on different devices, like a computer, tablet, or phone.
Have you ever visited a website on your phone and it looked really small, and you had to zoom in to see everything? That’s because the website wasn’t designed to work well on a small screen. With responsive web design, the website is made to change and adapt to different screen sizes automatically, so it always looks good and is easy to use, no matter what device you’re using.
For example, if you’re looking at a website on your computer, the website might have a big picture at the top and a menu bar on the side. But if you’re looking at the same website on your phone, the picture might be smaller and the menu might be at the top, so you can easily tap the buttons with your fingers.
The idea behind responsive web design is that a website should look just as good on a mobile device as it does on a laptop or desktop computer, adjusting its size and layout dynamically based on the device being used.
In a responsive design, the layout, images, and other content elements are resized and rearranged dynamically based on the size of the device’s screen. This is achieved through the use of flexible grids, images, and CSS media queries, which allow the web page to respond and adapt to the size of the screen. These are things that your web designer will have to take care of for you.
Responsive Web Design Tester and Example
But if you want to test whether your website is responsive, you can use the Google Mobile friendly-test. However, I prefer to use the Responsive Design Checker website.
On their website, enter your web address and use the menu on the left-hand side to check how your website will appear on different devices. Ghanayellowpages.com is used as an example in the images below.
How the ghanayellowpages.com website appears on a Laptop
How the ghanayellowpages.com website appears on a tablet
How the ghanayellowpages.com website appears on a phone
Why Responsive Web Design Important
The web design service you pay for should aim at increasing your online sales. A responsive web design is important for a business that wants to achieve high conversion on its website for several reasons:
- Improved User Experience: A responsive website provides a consistent and optimal user experience across all devices, which can lead to a higher level of user engagement and a lower bounce rate. This, in turn, can increase the likelihood of a user taking a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.
- Better Accessibility: A responsive website is easily accessible on any device, including smartphones and tablets, which are becoming increasingly popular for browsing the web. This means that businesses can reach a wider audience and potentially increase sales by making their website accessible to a larger number of users.
- Increased Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Google and other search engines prioritize websites that are mobile-friendly and provide a good user experience. A responsive website can help a business improve its search engine rankings and visibility, which can drive more organic traffic to the site and increase conversions.
- Cost-Effective Maintenance: By using a single responsive design, a business can maintain a single codebase, which makes updates and maintenance easier and more cost-effective. This can also help to ensure that the website is consistent and up-to-date across all devices.
Overall, a responsive web design can help a business improve its website’s user experience, accessibility, and search engine optimization, which can lead to higher conversion rates and better business outcomes.
How to make your website responsive
For web designers and developers, there are several tools they can use to make a website responsive. However, they are not the target audience for this post. This post was written for entrepreneurs and businesses who need to get more sales from their websites.
Therefore, I will give you a simple answer to how to make your website responsive. The best way is to use a Content Management System (CMS) such as WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Magento, etc. Such CMSs have themes and templates that are already responsive. Hence, you need not worry about how to make your website one.
On the other hand, if you already have a non-responsive website, you may have to redesign it using one of the CMSs mentioned above. The difficulty of this process depends on the technology or codes used to build your existing website that you would like to redesign.
How to use Responsive Web Design to Increase Conversions
Use Quality Content and Images
Having quality content and images on your website is essential for optimizing user experience. Make sure that you have relevant, interesting content and images that engage users and keep them on the site.
You should also optimize the size of your images to ensure high-speed page loads — no one wants to wait too long for a page to load! Additionally, take advantage of video content by incorporating videos into your web pages. Video can help boost engagement and conversions, so make sure that you’re using it whenever possible.
Focus on Usability
When it comes to responsive web design, usability is key. Think of how users interact with your website on different devices and make sure they don’t have to pinch and zoom or scroll too much.
Make sure that all buttons, links, images, and text are easy to click on and read from any device. To increase conversions, don’t hide related actionable elements—make them visible so the user doesn’t have any trouble locating or understanding them.
Monitor Site Performance and Adjust as Needed
After launching your responsive web design, it is important to monitor its performance and adjust it as needed. Evaluate your metrics periodically and identify issues that could be hindering user experience and conversions.
Ensure that load speeds are up to scratch—mobile users don’t have the patience to wait for a page to load endlessly. Making changes to website elements such as font size, colours, and call-to-action buttons will ensure that your website remains optimized.
Personalize Your User’s Experiences With Targeted Messages.
Personalizing a user’s experience on your website by targeting them specifically with content relevant to their needs will increase engagement and conversion rates. To do this, you can use data analysis tools to determine what type of users are navigating your site and give them personalized messages accordingly. This way, each user will receive tailored web design content that is meant to address their individual needs in an interactive way. It will also give the user an impression that you know who they are and have spent time getting to know them before making any conversion attempts.
Some ways that a website can improve user experiences with targeted messages include:
- Personalization: Showing messages or content that are tailored to the user’s interests, browsing history, or behaviour on the website.
- Recommendations: Suggesting products or services that are similar to things the user has previously looked at or purchased.
- Notifications: Provide updates or alerts to the user based on their preferences, such as when a product they’re interested in goes on sale or when an item is back in stock.
- Abandoned Cart Reminders: Reminding users who added items to their shopping cart but didn’t complete the purchase to come back and finish their transaction.
Conclusion
People spend lots of time on their mobile phones these days. They prefer doing almost every task on their mobile devices. This includes online shopping. Because more people are using their mobile devices to shop online, you should make your website responsive or mobile-friendly.
If you are looking for a responsive web design to be done for you, use our Web Design & Development product to place your order. You can also email us at bisa@ghanayellowpages.com