Don’t Hold Back Your Business Online. Invest in a Responsive Website.
After the proliferation of the Internet itself, and the ongoing cloud computing revolution, ‘going mobile’ is almost certainly the next big thing happening in the online marketplace right now.
Consider This:
- We will have around 4.55 billion mobile users (worldwide) by the end of 2014 (source)
- Of these, 1.75 billion users will have smartphones (source)
- China, India and the United States lead in terms of number of subscriptions (source)
- Around one fifth of the global web traffic is originating from mobile devices (source)
Can you read the writing on the wall? The world is going mobile.
You can sit back and procrastinate endlessly or you can make an informed decision and have your WordPress website revamped at the earliest.
Let’s take a look at the chief reasons why you should consider a responsive design for your WordPress website:
1. People Are Using Mobile Devices for Online Shopping
One of the chief misconceptions many eCommerce entrepreneurs have is that people do not shop online when they are using smartphones or tablets.
Fact of the matter is that an increasingly large number of people are now using mobile devices to shop online.
Last year on Thanksgiving, for example, mobile traffic accounted for HALF of the total eCommerce traffic. 25% of all purchases during this festive season were made from mobile devices. In November 2013, Walmart’s ‘new mobile customers’ had increased three times compared to the previous year.
The bottom line is that if you have a WordPress based eCommerce website, you need to think of ways to reach out to mobile users.
But, why not go for mobile apps, you’d ask?
2. Developing Native Mobile Apps is darn expensive
When told to consider Responsive Web Design (RWD) for a WordPress website, many business owners ask if they should go for native mobile apps instead. The answer in most cases is ‘No.’
Developing native mobile apps even for some of the most popular mobile platforms including Android, iOS, Symbian etc. is very expensive and there’re not just 3 platforms. There are hundreds of mobile platforms. It’s just impossible to develop separate applications for all of them.
You’ve chosen WordPress probably because it’s open-source, scalable and comes pre-loaded with tones of features.
A responsive design can supercharge this highly useful content management system (CMS).
3. Responsive WordPress Websites Will Have Shorter Page Load Times
On the Internet, it’s a race against time when it comes to page load times. People wait no more than 3 seconds for a web page to load completely. Google also wants webmasters to make serious efforts to decrease page load times.
What if your prospective customers are leaving your website just because your web server is struggling to have large 2500x3000px images delivered to a Smartphone’s web browser? It may take extra few seconds, thereby leading to a high bounce rate for all of your mobile traffic.
Having a responsive WordPress website means that images can be shrunk down significantly (depending upon the screen size).
Not just heavy eCommerce websites but even simple blog pages won’t load quickly on a mobile device unless your WordPress website is responsive.
4. WordPress’s Auxiliary Areas May Not Scale Well on Smaller Screens
If you carry out background changes (changes in navigations & sidebars, for example) on your own, chances are that you will end up adding elements that do not scale well on smaller screens.
Out-of-place auxiliary areas can make an otherwise appealing WordPress website look ugly. With a responsive design, the same functionality works to your advantage!
5. Applying Good Styles on Auto Generated Areas on a WordPress Website is Easier
WordPress generates a large number of CSS classes for many auto generated sections such as comment section, post body, archives etc.
A team comprising of a specialist WordPress developer and responsive website designer can put this feature to a very good use. They can use these CSS classes to apply really great styles to auto generated areas in your theme for many screen sizes.
6. Cost Effective in the Long Run
Managing two different websites is of course more expensive than managing one in the long run. That’s basic mathematics.
Initially, building a responsive WordPress website may appear a slightly costly proposition (around 25-40%) but in the long run, it’s actually cost-effective.
7. Google Will Love Your Website
Yes, ‘responsive design’ is Google’s recommended configuration for the mobile web.
Having a responsive WordPress website means that you’re kind of future-proofing it!
8. Better User Experience
Providing one unique website across multiple devices means that you can ensure better user experience (UX). Happy website users become your first time and repeat customers (if you’re selling good stuff!).
And guess what the Big Boss has to say on this!
Google Mobile blog says that mobile traffic is more likely to result in higher conversion rate if you have a mobile friendly website!
9. Mobile Web May Soon Be Bigger Than Traditional Desktop Web
Mobile internet use is expected to outgrow the desktop internet use in about a year!
Take a look at your website traffic stats and you will know that your WordPress website is already receiving increasingly more mobile visitors.
Do you want to wait until all of your competitors get ready for the mobile web while your website is still being run in an obsolete manner?
Old is not gold. Not in this case.
Are You Ready to Take Your WordPress Website to the Next Level?
Feel free to ask! We are WordPress developers and web designers and we’d like to help. Let’s talk about your next website design project.
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