How important is it to have a mobile responsive website design as part of any competent website design services & web redesign packages?

Mobile responsive website design is now crucial to your website rankings. Google spent  2 years of signalling the importance of providing a good viewing experience for mobile device users. The market penetration of smartphones and tablets has increased exponentially over recent years. This is the fastest-growing sector of internet viewers.

A new ranking algorithm was introduced on 21 April 2015. If your website is not yet mobile-friendly, don’t expect good rankings! This was followed up with the Google page load speed optimisation requirement introduced in July 2021. Therefore, both aspects are a core part of WordPress SEO Packages.

Is your Site Mobile-Friendly?

Google provide a Mobile-friendly testing tool that assesses how well your site is presented to mobile device viewers, see; Google | Webmasters Tools | Mobile-friendly Test

If you get an “epic fail” you should get in touch to see how we can help you attain the required standard.

Bear in mind that this is not going to go away! In fact, it’s rapidly becoming the daily global norm for many people accessing websites for everything from online shopping to social media. Providing a small-screen viewing mechanism for potential clients to view your website could well be a life-or-death business decision in some niche markets.

I think this is particularly important for ‘local’ service businesses such as accommodation, electrical supplies, dining and the like. All smartphones have GPS and mapping tools built in. GPS-based proximity searches are now mainstream activities. For example, users understand that looking on their smartphone map application to find the nearest accommodation, restaurant or gas station is the fastest, smartest way to find what is nearby…

If your business website is too rigid and awkward to be easily visible/navigable to smartphone users, you are cutting yourself off from more and more customers every day!

Mobile Responsive Website Design Solutions

There are a variety of ways of providing enhanced mobile viewing of your website;

Separate Mobile Site

Often created in a subdomain of your current site. Smartphones and tablets are auto-detected and redirected to the mobile-friendly version of the website. This was 1st-generation mobile access and had a relatively high overhead due to the need to maintain dual versions of your website. This approach does not comply with Google’s recommendations.

Theme Switching

In the case of WordPress, many sites used a Mobile Switcher which auto-sensed mobile devices and switched to a Mobile-friendly theme. Some plugins can be set to display the “Contact Us” page as the default for viewers using mobile browsers. This gives the site visitor instant access to the information they are most likely to require, on the very first screen. This approach does not comply with Google’s recommendations.

Mobile Responsive Design

Auto-senses between desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone. Seamlessly regenerates page displays on the fly depending on screen size. Preserves the URLs and content, resizes images, and condenses menus. Strips out extraneous content formatting. This is the smartest option, and the latest responsive themes for WordPress are truly impressive!

Check how your website looks at:

• Ready.mobi
• Responsinator
• Screenfly

When considering a WordPress website redesign, a mobile responsive design theme running on WordPress as a content management system is capable of remarkable flexibility. It also offers the best value in terms of solving the maximum number of challenges at the least cost.

Frankly, what with successive hits by Google’s Panda, Penguin, Helpful Content and E-E-A-T updates, it’s become progressively more difficult to get traffic onto your site! You really can’t afford to have a growing percentage of your visitors turning away because your website is inflexible and difficult to use on a small-screen device! Instead, ensure that the content auto-adjusts to ANY screen size, thus making navigation easy, and content viewable.

Within the WordPress content management system arena, the number of responsive design themes being produced is rapidly growing. Many theme designers are issuing new mobile responsive versions of existing theme platforms. An example is the folks at Generatepress.com / Kadence and Astra who are aggressively developing very fast and responsive design themes with enhanced features to meet the “mobile” challenges of page load speed, mobile-friendly design and user experience.

Page last Updated on 1st October 2023 by the author Ben Kemp