Avatar Posted by Cameron Francis on in News Uncategorized

Do you own a business website? Here’s something you need to know real quick. If you don’t have a responsive website, you’re driving customers away and losing a lot of money.

You see, having a mere standard website is no longer enough these days. You need to make your website mobile friendly. Nowadays, consumers are increasingly using mobile devices to search and browse for products and services.

In fact, data collected by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) indicate that as of June 2013, about 7.5 million people accessed the internet in search of information, businesses, services and products at least once a day from their mobile devices.

This goes to show that getting your website mobile friendly is a necessity. The question now is which option should you choose? Responsive Websites or Separately Hosted Mobile Sites?

From our experience here at eTraffic Web Design, we found responsive websites to be far more superior to separately hosted mobile sites. This is in terms of search ranking, functionality and maintenance. Here’s why:

Easy Rendering on all Devices

Have you ever had to visit a website that was tacky and didn’t look good on your device? If you have, then you know that it was difficult to get anything from the website. Chances are you got out of there quickly and looked elsewhere for a solution.

If your website doesn’t display well on mobile devices, then your visitors will react the same way you do – leave the site and go to a competitor!

By employing responsive web design solutions, you never have to worry about your website displaying well on every type of mobile gadget there is.

One Less Step to Accessing Your Websites

Separately hosted mobile sites often require people to jump through one more hoop by making them click the link. This is not particularly useful considering you don’t want to give an already fickle visitor the opportunity to turn away from your website and go elsewhere.

With responsive website design, there’s really no need for this. Once your visitors access the website, that’s it. There’s no need to send them to a mobile friendly site or ask them to choose between the “desktop version” and the “mobile version”.

Mobile Friendly Search Engine Ranking Factor

responsive design browsing

Now more than ever, search engines are placing high priority on websites that are naturally mobile friendly. This means responsive design websites are given higher ranking than separately hosted mobile sites.

This should be a real issue for any small business owner because traffic coming from mobile devices is huge and can translate into significant business and profit. In fact, it is possible to not rank highly on the desktop results and rank highly on the mobile searches simply because you have a mobile ready website.

No Need for a Sub-Domain

Separately hosted mobile websites often need sub-domains with their own separate domain names to function. This can be a lot of work as you would have to determine what content to upload, what domain to host it on and what designs to use.

So, it is not often surprising to notice a significant difference between the site design on separately hosted mobile sites and their desktop version. With responsive design websites however, there’s really no need to worry about any subdomain. Your website just automatically opens on the same domain name and renders flawlessly on any mobile device.

Works on Future Devices

Small business owners who invest in responsive website designs will always benefit from the fact that they never have to re-adapt or build new websites for future gadgets and devices. Responsive designs are an investment in the future. The code they are built on are designed to adapt to all future technologies.

So, chances are you won’t ever have to develop or design a new website unless you decide it’s time for a website makeover, which is an entirely different story. With a separately hosted mobile site, however, you may have to completely redesign and build another one to adapt to future technologies. And you can be sure that when that time comes, it will cost you far more than what you would have paid for a responsive web design.

Easy Maintenance and Abundance of Content

A separately hosted mobile website is difficult to maintain. It requires “double” updates, meaning if you change your pricing on the desktop version, you would have to do the same for the mobile version. If you put up a blog post on desktop version, you would have to post the same article for the mobile version.

As you can see, this can become tiring and frustrating. Not just that, this can translate into a significant waste of your time. So, why not just do the smart thing and avoid stressing yourself by simply getting a responsive design website.

Since all updates on your main website will display equally well on all mobile devices, you need to do it only once.

So, if you’re on the go and want to post up something via your phone or tablet, you don’t have to duplicate the task on your desktop computer when you get to your office. You can easily go through it, post it up via your phone and the same thing will render effectively on your desktop and laptop computers. It’s that easy.

By now you’ve understood that hosting a mobile site separately is a waste of time and money. If you would like to know how you can employ responsive design solutions for your website, contact us at eTraffic. Let’s figure out how we can help you make your website truly mobile friendly.

At eTraffic Web Design, our team is dedicated and committed to providing you with the best possible website at pocket friendly rates. Get in touch with us now.

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