As technology continues to become more powerful, our day-to-day connection to the internet has evolved as well. While it was once only possible to access the internet from a home computer, most people have mobile devices on them at all times that provide the same access. Because of this, the nature of browsing – and of websites entirely – has changed. Mobile responsive design is one of the major shifts that has occurred because of this, but why exactly has it become necessary for any website or blog? Let’s walk through the reasons so that you can understand just how important it is to have responsive design.

Changes in Internet Browsing

As alluded to before, the way in which we absorb content via the web has changed entirely. More people now access the internet on a daily basis from a mobile device than from a standard desktop PC. This means that pinging users with content often results in them reading or seeing it on a mobile device. Websites that are formatted for standard desktop browsing might be accessible through some mobile devices, but many elements (font size, resolution, image scaling, etc) just don’t render or adjust properly on mobile phones and tablets. Because of this, responsive design became necessary to ensure a uniform browsing experience for all visitors.

Search Engine Mandates

In recent years, search engines took a hard look at how people browse content and realized something astonishing: most of their traffic comes through mobile devices. Websites that are optimized for standard browsing experiences are incapable of serving consistently high-quality, properly-formatted content to mobile users. As such, Google and other search engines changed their algorithms to promote sites in their rankings that utilize responsive design. By the same token, sites that lack responsive design elements have seen their prominence in search results reduced over the past three years.

Time Is Valuable

Another important element in motivating responsive design was the amount of time that it takes to load various websites and pages. If you are on a mobile device, then there is a very good chance that your internet speed is slower than on a traditional device. This means that it will take longer to load an unoptimized page on a mobile device than a desktop device. Because search engines – and people – value fast loading times for pages, responsive design has increasingly become necessary in order to compete. Even if pinging users with slow-loading pages didn’t turn off visitors, search engines also use this as one metric for evaluating how prominently a page should rank in search.

A Standardized Experience

Last but not least, brands and businesses want to have control over how their brands are experienced and appear to the masses. When using a standard design technique that does not adapt to the individual device viewing it, this suddenly becomes an issue. While the page itself may format in a uniform fashion, the browsing experience for the user varies from device to device. With mobile responsive design, brands have control over how they design the experience for each particular visitor, giving them full control over the brand’s impression in any situation.

As more and more people use mobile devices – many of them exclusively – responsive design will continue to become the standard. What are some other reasons you can think of that makes responsive design a superior choice? Leave us a comment below with your thoughts.