Responsive Design or Mobile Optimisation is Important
Summary
There are three major reasons why to update your website to a responsive design for mobiles and tablets.???
- A growing number of tablet and smart phone users
- User satisfaction
- Google ranking
Research
This blog takes data primarily from the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) research conducted in December 2014 on The Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle.???
They surveyed 1459 respondents to gather their information. You can get their paper HERE.
It also takes data from the Australian Communications and Media Authority communications report (Report) and statements from Telsyte (Statement), Netbiscuits (Infographic) and Google (Blog).???
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What does optimising your website for mobile and tablet devices do????
Optimising your website will allow your customers to be able to navigate through your site more easily. When users view a site on a mobile or tablet device, it changes the layout to a smaller screen with bigger buttons in order to provide information quickly. It also removes large pictures and big amounts of data content in order to provide a faster loading time.???
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Why should you optimise or make your website responsive for mobile smart phones and tablets?
This article will look at how many Australians own and use smart phones to visit websites. It will also look at Google's view on mobile optimised devices and briefly look at how responsive design aids to consumer satisfaction.
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Seventy percent of Australians own and use smart phones to visit websites
AIMIA?????s survey found that 86% of their respondents use their mobile phones ?????To visit websites &/or browse or search the internet?????? & the majority of respondents do this one to five times a day.
According to the ACMA "The number of adult Australians accessing the internet via their mobile phone handsets in the six months to May 2014 reach(ed) 70 per cent".???
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Media tablet ownership and its use to visit websites are on the rise
Telsyte, a market research company, estimated that at the end of 2013, 9.4 Million Australians were using media tablets with an estimated 22 Million by 2018.
According to AIMIAs respondents, 26% of tablet usage is to visit websites. The below graph depicts usage of Mobile Phones, Tablets & Computers.
(AIMIA 2014, p59)
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Making your website responsive gives an increase to customer satisfaction
Optimising your site decreases the load time by making it a smaller size (also helpful for mobile users who have a limited amount of data) and increasing customer ease by making buttons more accessible. Net Biscuits state that customer satisfaction is such an important feature that forty eight percent of people will switch to a competitor if the site is not optimised.???
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Google likes mobile optimised websites.
Google will actively identify to users that the website is mobile friendly. This is seen in the example on the right.
Google have also released a blog article stating ?????Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.?????? - (Blog)
This means that if your website is not mobile & tablet optimised it will affect your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). IE your Google rank will decrease
I recommend testing your website on Google's???Mobile-Friendly Test
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Radian Web are currently offering a special for Mobile Optimisation. Contact Us Today???for more information
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