There is absolutely NO way you can get away with a site that is not mobile responsive. Repeat after me. Again. Done? Good.

Imagine yourself standing in line at your favorite coffee shop for your favorite beverage. The line is long and the baristas are busy, so you take out your phone and start browsing Facebook. You come across this super cool lady and decide to check out her website. After all, she seems to have just the right thing you need right now in your business.

But what is this? You can’t read half of the content, the navigation is out of reach and no matter how you turn your beloved device, there is no way to get rid of that awkward pop up. The images all look blurry and distorted. The more you try to find your way through that digital wasteland, the more confused you get. And impatient. And by the way, the line has moved and the barista is ready to take your order.

Would you stay on this site? Probably you would run away faster than Cinderella was running when she heard the clock ring at midnight. Would you ever go back to that page? Surely not on your mobile. Maybe later, on your laptop or desktop. If you remember.

And now imagine you wouldn’t be the lady standing in line for her coffee in this little story, but the super cool lady who’s getting checked out (virtually, of course!). Doesn’t feel good, right? So let’s dig deeper into the details why it’s vital for your website to be mobile responsive.

Better User Experience through mobile responsive design

Over 50% of web users use their mobile devices to surf the net more than their desktop. And with all the fancy phones and tablets being almost essential to our lives, these numbers will not decrease over time.

So you want to make totally sure that your website looks great across all devices. Because when you give your users a terrible experience, they won’t stay for long – and they’ll most likely never come back.

But if the user stays longer on your site, the chance is higher that he’ll or she’ll sign up for your list or even buy from you.

Google penalizes websites without mobile responsive design

Yes it’s true. If your website lacks mobile responsive design, chances are high that Google will penalize you and push you further down in the search engine results. It’s already no easy task to get you website up high into Google ranks, so why jeopardize this further by not taking care of how your website is displayed across the various screens?

Features of a good mobile responsive design

Now that we know why we need our websites to be mobile responsive, let’s look into some features of a good mobile responsive design.

1. No Popups obscure the main page
   Popups can be useful as marketing tools, but if they come up and obscure everything and maybe even the viewer can’t get rid of them easily. These popups will not only irritate your viewer, with Google’s upcoming changes in their algorithms sites with intrusive popups will be further penalized (If you want to know more about this, there is a great article here.)
2. Navigation is easily accessible and usable
   You sure know the “hamburger” menu icon – those three little bars that indicate there is a navigation menu hidden beneath. This convenient solution makes sure that no items of your navigation bar are out of reach and that your user can reach every nook and cranny on your website.
3. Images that are optimized for display on mobile
   Make sure that all your images resize correctly when the screen gets smaller. Also, your images shouldn’t be too big in file size to start with. Try to keep all images under 100 kb in file-size, unless they lose too much quality during compression.
   You can find some additional tips about image formats and file sizes in this blog post.

My last tip: Make sure that when you discuss any website project with a designer that they know you want it optimized for mobile. It shouldn’t be something you need to point out, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

If you want to see how your site looks on different mobile devices, you can go and check it here: responsivepx.com

And on a little site note: All my packages include mobile responsive design. Because who wants a website that looks like you’re stranded under the Troll’s bridge? (Hint: No one).

With love, sparkles & pixiedust