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Do Google-Ranked Websites Favor Mobile Friendly Over Responsive Design?

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RemotoDojo
Do Google-Ranked Websites Favor Mobile Friendly Over Responsive Design?

If you are new to digital marketing, then you might find yourself torn between making your website ‘mobile friendly’ and someone telling you to go for ‘responsive web design.’

This is sort of a false dilemma. The truth is that responsive web design is technically mobile friendly.

To clear up this confusion, one just needs to look back on recent history. Mobile web designs were beginning to trend as the natural result of the smartphone revolution some time after the 2010s.

That meant a lot of websites were scrambling to reach the then untapped viewership of mobile internet surfers. This had a lot of brands overhauling their entire websites with mobile versions that were more readable on tablets and smartphones as opposed to desktop browsers.

For a while, a lot of them were seeing success with the move. But then, things were only getting even more complicated really fast. New devices meant newer resolutions and rapidly changing screen sizes. Further complicating this was that some brands did not even do all that well on their website’s mobile versions and continued to still do better by improving content viewed from the desktop.

That is how responsive design came to be. Instead of manually altering a website design to fit a dozen formats, it was instead coded to ‘respond’ and alter these layouts depending on what device a reader is on.

Granted, this is still far from perfect and it takes a combined effort of graphic design and backend coding to do it flawlessly for every website. Some sites still make embarrassing responsive design failures even today.

The question of mobile friendliness versus responsive design is really a question about the kind of value you want to get for your digital marketing campaign. You can further break this question down into three:

Do you know what it will cost?

A website with a fixed layout (be it for mobile or desktop) is arguably faster and simpler to get off the ground. That makes it cheaper and you may not even need much backend coding to make it work. Fixed layouts are also a safer start for websites that have a lot of content (whether its videos, images, blogs etc). In contrast, responsive design takes a lot of effort and may even require outsourcing a software engineer if you want it to be really flawless and high-end.

Is it worth missing out on reach?

Upgrading to a responsive design website means you really need to know your target audience. For example, if you are a small, local business that is already earning with just a mobile layout then consider sticking with that until you can figure out how a responsive design can bring in more sales. On the other hand, if you are set on growth and know your brand can really explode into the scene with a wide audience, then go for it!

How quickly can you adopt responsive design?

As with anything to do with design, there is no one-size fits all approach to going from a fixed, mobile/desktop layout to a workable responsive website. That is why digital marketing campaigns should consider a roadmap that tests different designs. Fortunately, tools for this type of testing have been getting cheaper.

Again, it is all about value. You need to weigh the costs and effort of making your brand more dynamic and accessible online, then estimate if it was all worth it. And as you are doing that, never forget that your audience still comes first!

 

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RemotoDojo
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