Responsive Web Sites

Responsive Web Sites

NOW A NECESSITY, NOT A NICETY

If you have been listing to the radio or watching television recently, you may have heard them talk about the great Google “mobilegeddon”, and why your web site must be “responsive” to avoid it. Are you wondering what on Earth they are talking about?

WHAT IS A “RESPONSIVE” WEB SITE?

A responsive web site examines the device it is being viewed on and adjusts the layout, navigation, and content to fit that device’s screen in the best possible fashion. Not only will the site look better, it will be easier to read and navigate even on small screens.

A sample responsive site built by PerthWeb is www.leatherandluggage.com.au. Try viewing the site on a PC and then a mobile phone, or by just adjusting the screen width on the web browser of a PC to see how the site resizes.

DO I REALLY NEED THIS?

PerthWeb recently did some of its own research, reviewing the Google Analytics of many of its client’s web sites. It turns out that on almost all our client web sites, more than 50% of the visitors are using a smart device such as a tablet or mobile phone. So if it your site isn’t responsive then you may be losing clients, with a large proportion of your web site visitors abandoning their visit as your site isn’t easy to use on their smart device.

Google also prefers responsive web sites, rather than the previous trend of developing separate computer and mobile versions of a web site, so that it doesn’t have to index multiple versions of the web site. In fact it recently announced it will start penalising web sites that are not responsive by lowering their web site rankings, which could be devastating for your web site and the business it generates for you. See http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html for more details.

HOW DO I KNOW IF MY WEB SITE IS ALREADY RESPONSIVE?

On all new web site builds we now make the web site responsive.  If your web site was built more than 2 years ago it’s unlikely that it is responsive, as this is a relatively new technology. Even if it is less than 2 years old, when it was built there was likely an additional fee to make it responsive and you may not have elected to take this option. To check whether it is responsive you can also visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ and enter your web site address to check it.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST & HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO UPGRADE MY SITE?

The cost to upgrade a web site to be responsive varies depending on a number of factors such as the complexity of the web site layout and whether the Content Management System (CMS) needs modification to support responsive design. We will examine your web site and provide a tailored quotation. Many clients also take the opportunity to revamp the web site’s look and feel at the same time. The upgrade itself should take around 2 weeks, and will be performed on a separate web site so there is no interruption to your current web site.

Please contact us if you have any questions and/or would like to arrange a quote for an upgrade to your web site.