The Internet has become an integral part of everyday life. Even on the move, more and more surfed with mobile phone and tablet. Therefore, it is enormously important that the homepage on all devices is clearly displayed and easy to use. Responsive web design is essential for a clean presentation, but also for search engine optimization.
The Importance of Responsive Web Design
“Responsive” translates from the English as “react”. Translated to the web design, one could say the design “responds” to the device on which it is displayed. When creating a homepage in Responsive Web Design, it specifies how the page is displayed on different screen sizes. On the monitor with at least 1024-pixel resolution, the user sees a classically constructed website, usually with a few columns next to each other.
If the same page is called up with the tablet, which has significantly less width, the columns adjust themselves so that a clean picture develops. Even further, the content of the page must adapt when it is opened with the smartphone. In this case, the page recognizes the resolution and usually has no more columns, but sorts the content among themselves.
Reasons for Responsive Web design
- Ease of use
A background of the development of websites in responsive design, is the user-friendliness. The user should be able to operate the website well on the smartphone like on his family PC. It is important that the entire content is displayed legibly in the width of the mobile screen. But the operability must be guaranteed.
For this, the menu usually turns to a button that can be opened via the touchscreen. The menu items sort themselves clean when unfolded, in a size that can be easily operated via the touch screen. If a screen layout in the entire width of the smartphone screen adapt, texts and buttons would be so small that they would not be operated without constant zooming. Often you can still experience this with older websites that have not yet been created in respect to responsive design.
- Appearance and success of a website
Especially for companies, the Internet is an important marketing and sales channel. The company’s appearance on the Internet often decides within seconds whether a customer remains interested or not. The homepage is the digital business card of a company, no matter if it is a landing page, an online shop or a pure information page. The success of the site depends heavily on the first impression of the user. This should be as optimal as possible on all devices.
- Search Engine Optimization and Google Ranking
Google is the #1 search engine on the web. Almost everyone looking for a product, service or just information today enters a search term on Google. As the number of web pages gets bigger and bigger, Google has to select more and more filters to show the user the best pages in the first positions. In this selection, the added value that a page has over other competitors plays a major role. Since April 2014, the user-friendliness – including via responsive web design – is also included in Google’s algorithms. For example, if two companies bid on the same product for the search term, the page created in Responsive Web Design will be preferred by Google and placed further ahead.
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