The Importance of a Fully Responsive Website Design
Given the extreme rise in mobile device users and the growing number of searches done within mobile browsers, it’s safe to say you’d be doing yourself a serious disservice if your website does not respond and adjust to all devices of all sizes.
Responsive web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform, and orientation.
Many novice website builders out there attempt to make themselves sound like their design skills are up-to-par by telling you they look good on a computer and a mobile phone. They might even use the term mobile-friendly. Something to watch out for, and what most of these website builders are missing, is a design that is friendly to all the other screen sizes in between.
A vital distinction you must understand is that a fully responsive website is very different from a mobile-friendly website. Essentially, a mobile-friendly website will convert well and look good on the most common sizes of mobile device screens but might have glitches and be harder to navigate when viewed on devices with a higher resolution.
A responsive website design allows the content on your web pages to adapt to the size of any screen, meaning all of your web pages look just as good on a desktop as they will on a phone, tablet, or any other device. Rather than making a user scroll horizontally as well as vertically when viewing your site, responsive design reconfigures all of a web page’s text, buttons, and images to a more narrow layout that’s only as wide as the screen of the device being used. No extra work for the user!
The ultimate goal with responsive web design is to avoid unnecessary resizing, scrolling, or zooming, which users often experience with sites that have not yet been optimized for all devices. Websites like this are frustrating and difficult for users to navigate, and they’ll ultimately keep you from getting contacted by new potential clients.
Looking for more super-charged marketing tips? Take our e-course on 8 Unconventional Ways to Market Your Private Practice!
Why Responsive Website Design is Important
Since we now live in a multi-screen society, your private practice website must be viewable across as many devices as possible. You never know what device someone will be using to view your website.
Responsive design can help you solve a lot of visibility problems and improve the overall user experience. Yes, it will make your site mobile-friendly, but it will also improve the way it looks on ALL devices, whether it’s a standard screen size or not. It will also help increase the amount of time visitors spend on your site and the number of new client conversion rates.
If that wasn’t enough already, here are some of the additional benefits that come with having a fully responsive website.
1. Cost-Effectiveness
Today when it comes to having a website, it has to be mobile-friendly. With roughly 49% of website visitors coming from mobile devices, you want to be sure your website looks just as good on a mobile device as it does on a desktop. BUT maintaining separate sites for your mobile and non-mobile audiences can get expensive.
Using responsive design, you can save money by eliminating the cost of paying for a mobile site. You will only need to invest in a single site design to appeal to all visitors and all devices.
A responsive website also offers you a lower maintenance cost compared to running two versions of one website. It’s easier to maintain one responsive website than maintaining two versions of the same site, which will free up more of your time to dedicate to other important areas of your business. Your time is precious, and you shouldn’t waste any time creating multiple unnecessary pages.
2. Flexibility
When you have a responsive website, you can make changes easily and quickly. There will be no need to worry about making changes on two websites. This creates a huge advantage when you want to make a quick design tweak or fix a typo on your site. You only have to do it once.
3. Improved User Experience
You want people to like your site, and you want it to be easy to use to convince them to use your services. Suppose someone visits your website on a mobile device, and it either takes forever to load, your pictures don’t look quite right, or the scaling of any of the elements are off. It can make your practice seem unprofessional, and no one wants to work with an unprofessional clinician.
Responsive design offers a fantastic user experience, which will result in clients having a positive experience on your site, making them more likely to book a session with you. By eliminating unnecessary zooming and scrolling, your content can be viewed quicker, and the overall impression that visitors have will be much more informed and more positive.
4. SEO Boost
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a strategy used to help boost your ranking in Google’s search page results. The closer you are to the top, the better the chance you have of new potential clients finding you.
In combination with other SEO factors, responsiveness can help give you a significant boost in search engine results.
Google gives preference to websites with fully responsive designs, which provides them with a greater likelihood of ranking higher in Search engine results pages. Responsive sites also make for a better user experience. Users tend to spend far more time on fully responsive sites, which further improves your SEO efforts leading to a higher ranking.
Looking to improve your website’s SEO? Every Brighter Vision website package includes professional Search Engine Optimization for no additional cost. Schedule a Call.
5. Ease of Management
Additionally, with just one website, other website and marketing elements will be much easier to manage. You’ll never have to wonder if you should link the mobile or desktop site on a social media update or question whether or not all of your redirect links will be working. Responsiveness takes much of the stress out of managing your website as a whole.
6. Provides a Seamless User Experience
This is by far the most significant benefit of having a responsive website. Unresponsive websites usually distort how your website appears on mobile devices and tablets, which creates a frustrating user experience.
Affinity Counseling Group‘s Brighter Vision Website
While desktop viewers might have no problem viewing your website, the same doesn’t always apply for mobile or tablet users. In many cases, the text can jumble, images do not align, and users have to scroll through endless nonsense pages searching for the information they are looking for. This makes it a pain for users to use your site and results in many users abruptly leaving your page.
However, with a responsive site avoiding this is easy. A responsive website invites users to explore on any of their devices and makes the viewing experience much more enjoyable.
How You Can Achieve a Perfectly Responsive Website
If you are not familiar with WordPress or the backend of any website hosting platform, you may find it hard to figure out how to create a responsive design. The good news is, you don’t have to do this alone. There are plenty of resources you can turn to for a customized responsive website.
At Brighter Vision, all of our websites are 100% responsive, meaning that they look great on any device! This isn’t an extra cost or fee – it’s a design standard for any of our website packages.
If you aren’t quite ready to make the switch to Brighter Vision, you could hire a freelance designer to build (or redesign) your site, but make sure you first check their previous references. Web design is a challenging job and is not something you want to cut corners on just to save a little money.
If you are paying someone to do this, make sure you pay for someone to do a great job, or else you will have to revisit this issue further down the line and most likely have to pay more money, so doing it right the first will save you tons of money in the long run.
Get Started Designing a Fully Responsive Website
Responsive design is not a short trend or a trend at all. It doesn’t have a fleeting preference; in fact, it’s a long-term strategy that is vital to invest in to help you be even more accessible to potential clients. Screens and mobile devices will continue to evolve every day. Your website needs to meet every device’s needs so that all users are invited to explore your page and services.
After making your website’s design 100% responsive, you no longer have to worry about any new technology disrupting your website or making it obsolete. No matter what new device comes along in the next few years, a fully responsive website will already be prepared to take it on. This not only saves your sanity and your budget, but it will also keep your visitors happy, increase traffic flow, and bring in even more new clients for your practice.
Want the beautiful therapist website you deserve? Then you’re in the perfect place.
Brighter Vision is the ultimate marketing package for therapists, centered around the best therapist website you’ve ever had. Fill out the form below to learn more about our team of professionals who can’t wait to help your practice grow like never before 🙂
Ready to See How Brighter Vision Can Help You Get More Clients?
