What Are The Benefits Of Responsive Design & How It Affects Your Google Ranking?

Introduction

Nobody likes to wait, users abandon a site when they see it is loading and is not responsive enough, which directly impacts the revenue and Google ranking. So what needs to be taken care of? How to make our web design responsive? Is every page well optimized to increase retention and conversion rate? Let’s dive deep.

After “mobilegeddon“ on April 21st 2015, Google has started using responsive web design as a ranking factor. This means that any businesses with a responsive website will find this is adding to their higher search rankings on Google and fetch benefits of responsive design. Here are some interesting facts on the importance of responsive web design.

• 57% of internet users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed website on mobile.
• 85% of adults think that a company’s website when viewed on a mobile device should be as good or better than its desktop website.
• 38% of people stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive.
• 47% of Users expect a maximum of 2 seconds loading time for an average website.
• Statista reported that mobile traffic accounted for 52.2% of all internet traffic in 2018. This was up from 50.3% in 2017 and is likely even higher today.
• In 2018, Google reported that as page load time increased from one second to ten seconds, the bounce rate increased by as much as 123%.

So the key is building a google responsive website is it has to provide a great user experience. What is the definition? Responsive web design is a setup where the server always sends the same HTML code to all devices and CSS is used to alter the rendering of the page on the device. Google's algorithms should be able to automatically detect this setup if all Googlebot user agents are allowed to crawl the page and its assets. 

Why Google Prefers A Responsive Website?

Have a website that users need to pinch and zoom on their mobile devices to view? That user is as good as gone

Responsive design is Google’s recommended design pattern.

Yes, for the best user experience, your website should be responsive. Here are the key benefits:

Helps Google\'s Algorithms

Responsive website for business helps Google algorithm accurately assign indexing properties to the page rather than needing to signal the existence of corresponding desktop/mobile pages critical benefits of responsive design.

Saves Resources When Googlebot Crawls Your Site

Saves resources when Googlebot crawls your site, remember responsive website benefit in ranking. For responsive web design pages, a single Googlebot user agent only needs to crawl your page once, rather than crawling multiple times with different Googlebot user agents to retrieve all versions of the content.

Better Conversion Rate

Creating a consistent user experience across all devices is key to converting new customers. When users are deciding whether or not to subscribe to a service, they don't want to be redirected to device-specific websites because the process often takes longer. Having a single secure website that looks professional on all platforms makes users less likely to get frustrated or turn to a competitor one of the benefits of responsive design.

Low Loading Time

A responsive web design google reduces the site loading time by optimizing images, exclude unnecessary page elements. It’s critical that you understand how your different page elements are used by users because it makes it easier to determine which elements can be removed to improve performance. If you are still not sure whether investing in a more robust server setup is worth the additional investment, consider this: 

Google uses page speed as a ranking factor and there is a correlation between the time to first byte (TTFB) and search rankings. On top of that, every extra second it takes for your website to load will cause a 7% decrease in your conversion rate.

Low Bounce Rate

A responsive, optimized, google responsive website and the mobile site provide a much better user experience for the visitor. Therefore, it is much more likely that they'll stick around for a longer period of time and explore different areas of your site. Alternatively, if your site isn't responsive, it is much harder to keep the visitor engaged and therefore more likely that they'll bounce

Consistency In Design Across Devices

Responsive web design google lets designers show content based on the browser space available. This allows consistency between what a site shows on a desktop and what it shows on a handheld device. This encompasses everything from the placement of buttons and icons to the colors and fonts you use.

Booster For SEO

The key advantages of responsive web design are it affects your SEO through positive user behavior signals. Basically, if you are moving toward a more mobile-optimized website, then you have the approval of Google. And a mobile-optimized website often comes with a mobile responsive design and google responsive web design.

Increased Site Usability

The benefits of responsive design are that the users will have a much easier time navigating through your website, and overall have a good user experience. This entails that if your site’s user experience is top-notch, you will have repeat visitors and a higher amount of converted users. Leading to positive reviews, traffic, and branded searches.

No Duplicate Content With A Responsive Web Design

The duplicate content will harm your rankings if you do not help Google understand which of the pages are more vital. And the result of not fixing duplicate content will be lower rankings. However, if you incorporate a mobile responsive design on your website, then it will help you with your problem of having duplicate content because you will only use a single URL regardless of the device used by the user.

Enhances Your Social Media Presence

Having a mobile responsive design will make it easier for your visitors to share your content/pages on social media that could potentially help you gain more visitors. Having more visitors will help Google understand that your website could be trusted and has content that is liked by the users – which is a good thing.

More Mobile Traffic Gets Added To Your Funnel

By using some fancy HTML and CSS, responsive design automatically changes the layout of your website based on the screen size of the visitor. This means you can have optimized user experiences across desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Learning to build a responsive site takes a bit of skill, but it resolves the issues that you would normally encounter with mobile dedicated sites - there’s only one version of the site to maintain and there aren't any funky redirects to screw up. If designed correctly, responsive websites can be powerful and flexible. As with dedicated mobile sites, you can display information specifically for mobile users like a map or phone number.

Lower Maintenance Cost

Maintaining separate sites for your mobile and non-mobile audiences can get expensive. By using responsive design, you can save money by eliminating the cost of paying for a mobile site. You will only need to invest in a single site design to appeal to all visitors and all devices.

Another benefit of a responsive website for business is: it offers you a lower maintenance cost as compared to running two versions of one website.

However, it is relatively expensive in the beginning. But the reduced cost of maintaining two separate websites does add up.

Makes It Easier For Users To Share and Link To Your Content With A Single URL

We recommend using responsive web design because it makes it easier for users to share and link to your content with a single URL. Helps Google's algorithms accurately assign indexing properties to the page rather than needing to signal the existence of corresponding desktop/mobile pages.

Is Your Website Responsive Enough To Ensure A Healthy Consumer Retention Rate?

Testing A Responsive Web Design Involves Checking:

• How does your website load on various devices?
• Regardless of browser and devices, are all the links and URLs the same?
• Does the dynamic allocation of content change after screen resolution changes?

Two Common Ways To Test Your Site Responsive:

1. Use special tools.
2. Use your browser, like Google Chrome, to check it.

Top 8 Tools ToTest Responsive Design

Here are some of the website responsive testing tool, that will help you:

1. Emulators

This tool helps you see how your website will be displayed on different operating systems, phone models, and tablets on different types of browsers. No need to install Emulators to get the data.

2. Responsinator

Enter the URL to fetch the data of your page. It shows you how your site will look at specific types of devices. The tool shows the portrait and landscape view on different devices.

3. Viewport Resizer

View Port Resizer is an extension for browsers that lets you see how your site looks in various formats. You can apply 47 options for screen sizes.

4. Screenfly

Screenfly is a great option for viewing your site on various screen sizes be it phones, laptops, computers, tablets, and smartphones with different screen extensions. Just enter the URL of your site.

5. BrowserStack

This much-loved tool allows you to test your site on more than 2000 browsers and smartphones.

6. Responsive Design Checker

A responsive design checker is a tool that offers lots of ??screen sizes and comes with the features to make screenshots for mockups.

7. Cross Browser Testing

Cross Browser Testing is a multi-functional tool that allows you to test your site for responsiveness on various screen sizes and devices. You can take full-page screenshots and then compare them with previous versions.

8. Google Resizer

Google Resizer shows the look of your site on different devices after you enter your URL. 

Use Google Chrome to check website responsive

Steps to check your website’s responsive design with Google Chrome:

• Open the site you want to test in the Google Chrome tab. 
• Right-click on the landing page of the website to open the menu.
• After the menu opens, click "Inspect".
• Then click on the "Toggle device toolbar." Below we showed where this button is located.
• So you can see or your site is adaptive for some other types of devices and how it will look.

Checklist To Test The Responsiveness Of Your Site

Here is the website responsive checker

• Check the content, alignment, and font if they are equally displayed on all types of devices for google responsive web design.
• Look if you can conveniently switch between pages and easily return to the home page.
• Shrink and enlarge the window of your browser to if there is any challenge with changing viewports.
• Verify the working of all the links for a google responsive web design.  
• Check the loading speed of your page on various devices with different resolutions. 
• Check the correct display of the site menu and responsive navigation.
• Check whether all the images, videos, audio that are on your page are displayed and played without problems.
• Check the correct alignment of the header and text.
• Check all pop-ups work and are not broken due to change in extension.
• Check for no scrolling issues.
• Ensure that the user can easily fill in all the required fields.

How do I make my site responsive?

Did you check how your visitors use mobile?

Spend time surveying your website visitors or using analytics to understand why they're accessing your site with a mobile device, which pages and elements they engage with the most’ to draw analysis about which elements need to be readily available on smaller screens for responsive website design google.  

Plan the layout

Work on designing the wireframe and then the visual design of the website as it will help you create the exact look and feel that you want, also customization is easier whenever required, and integrate it seamlessly with your brand. Be sure to create several prototypes of your website and test them on various screen sizes to ensure the end design will be responsive. Some tools that you use to create responsive prototypes:

• Adobe Edge Reflow
• InVision
• Wirefy

Navigation

Navigation is a critical component for enhanced user-experience. The most important menu items should be visible properly on smaller screens. You can also include links to other pages in the text on your homepage to facilitate navigation that will get you the benefits of responsive design. 

Use Media Queries

The main role of media queries is that they allow you to optimize the layout of your website for various screen widths. When using media queries, the content will respond to different conditions on specific devices like media queries will check for the orientation, resolution, width. 

Optimize Typography

When it comes to text, make sure that the text is legible on smaller screens. Keep a good size for your body copy let’s say 16px and accordingly should be the heading and line size.

Use Microinteractions

Adopt Frameworks

Adding a responsive framework to your workflow, an HTML framework like Bootstrap used in an HTML template is good if you want to design simple, static websites. 

Key Takeaways

Rather than allocating huge marketing budgets, the first thing you need to check upon for increased conversion rate and user retention rate is how responsive your web design is? Spend time checking every single feature, page, element the user engages on your website to understand where you need to improve. To get benefits of responsive design invest in:

• Tools to check site responsiveness and create a google responsive website.
• For a google responsive web design plan the layout first
• Check the navigation
• Keep optimizing be it images, videos, or content
• Reduce loading time of your website
• Analyze and implement changes

Share your thoughts and vision with us if looking for a google responsive website!!