Having a well-made, professional website can help you improve your business's reputation, win over potential customers, and make more sales online. Even if your business website looks nice, that's not enough. It also needs to work correctly on mobile, - it needs to be "responsive."
What is a “responsive” website
A responsive website responds to the needs of its visitors depending on the size of the screen being used to access it. The display of text and images may switch from a three-column layout to a single column. Images that aren't needed are hidden so that they don't take away from the more important content on the site's smaller screen.
A site that is responsive and easy to use will have a higher chance of being ranked by Google’s algorithm.
Why Responsiveness is SO important.
Almost 60% of all Internet access is done through a phone.
94% of people judge a business’s credibility by how well their site works on their mobile device.
61% of people searching from their mobile device are more likely to call a local business if its website is easy to use on a mobile device.
Google Prioritises Responsive websites over mobile friendly & poorly optimised sites
Google penalises websites that are not rated responsive or user-friendly by placing them further down the search results.
Why does my website need to be responsive?
There isn't much point in having a website that no one can find or that doesn't connect you with NEW customers. Since July 2019, Google uses the mobile version of your website for indexing*. So, if your site isn't “mobile-responsive” and easy to use, it won't rank well (or at all) in search engines.
Give your website a Google Boost
Google gives a boost to sites that are rated responsive and user-friendly.
In order for your site to perform better in Search Engine Results, it needs to be user friendly as well as responsive!
How can I tell if my website is responsive?
There are a number of ways you can test to see how your website looks and works on various screen sizes.
Test it on your own mobile device
Open your website on your own tablet or phone (or borrow one from a friend).
Use your browser on a desktop computer to test for responsiveness
Navigate to your website, and then click and drag your browser window to make it bigger or smaller.
Use Google's responsive design checker
Go to search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
Type in your websites URL (address) and then click on “Test URL”
Responsive Viewer - Chrome Extension
Using Chrome Browser
Go to Responsive Viewer, and install the extension.
Navigate to the website you want to test & click on the extension to test in different screen sizes
This tool allows you to test the responsive versions of the site on all of the most popular mobile devices and operating systems at once.
What’s not to love?
Website not showing up in Google Search?
As of July 2019, Google penalises websites that are not rated responsive or user-friendly by placing them further down the search results.
So if your website was built before 2019 - there is a chance that it might not be
considered properly responsive
What should I look for in testing to see if my website is responsive
When testing the responsiveness of a website you should look for the following:
Is the content aligned & displayed consistently
Is the text readable on all screen sizes and does it scale properly.
Check that the words aren't cut off.
Text and images should stay inside the browser window and not overflow to the left or right.
Images should scale appropriately from desktop to mobile, portrait & landscape.
You should be able to use the websites navigation
and easily click on links on all devices.
The content should scale/resize neatly
based on portrait or landscape orientation.