Responsive Website Strategies

With clear direction from Google that Mobile-Friendly websites will see increased weight in ranking, it is important that your digital marketing strategy has a mobile-first approach.

On the 21st of April 2015 Google increased it’s ranking signal for websites that included mobile optimised content delivery and also including mobile apps.

What this simply means for businesses is that if you have a website that isn’t mobile-friendly, your search engine ranking will most likely slowly erode, as your competition makes the necessary upgrades to their websites to reflect search engine mobile preference.

What is a Responsive Website?

Mobile and tablet responsive website variations

A responsive website tailors the delivery of content to suit the device that is browsing it by changing the style settings dependent on the device, but it generally doesn’t change what HTML content is delivered in to the page.

As an addition to responsive design, Adaptive Content Delivery checks the browsing device and delivers HTML content (words and images) dependent on that device, as specified by the web designer.

How involved is it to upgrade a website to be mobile friendly?

There are 3 key factors to consider.

1) Budget

2) Technical structure of your existing website

3) Value of search engine results

Budget

When considering a mobile move your available budget will depend on whether you target a responsive style upgrade to your existing website or a re-development.

Responsive website re-development done properly involves much more design planning and technical development than the fixed structure websites did of a few years ago.

WordPress templates are a popular low budget but they often overly heavy with code and options which can affect the performance of the website which is another thing that signals for ranking.There is also the chance that your website will look like the guys down the road which is not a great reflection of the unique positioning of your business and brand.

A professionally produced website will require more investment, but will be planned and developed with design specific to your unique brand, have optimised information architecture, technical structure providing speed to offer a better user experience and mobile-friendliness ranking.

Existing website technical structure

Dependent on the coding structure of your existing website – and balancing this with your available budget – a responsive CSS stylesheet upgrade may deliver a satisfactory mobile upgrade.

Checking this doesn’t take long and usually just requires FTP access to the website host directory and an analysis of the code structure. We can do this for free, just contact us.

Search engine value

If your business targets search engine visitors as a key market for business generation then it pays to engage a web developer that understands the nuances of search engine optimisation when going mobile. There are literally hundreds of factors that can be planned and executed to increase SEO and how many are addressed depends on time available and how you factor this in to your overall marketing budget.

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