When you first set out to create a website for your rehab center, what were your main concerns? If you’re like many business owners, you considered visual appearance, ease of navigation, and informational content. And while these are all extremely important elements, there’s another one that’s become essential over the past few years: Responsive design.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term, responsive design basically just means creating your site in a way that allows it to function and display well on all devices. That means that whether your visitors access it on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer, they’ll all have the same experience.
But why is this so important? Keep reading to find out.
In today’s hyper-connected world, people don’t just use the Internet when they have the time to sit down at a laptop or desktop computer. Devices like smartphones allow us to look up information from wherever we happen to be – an ability that most of us take full advantage of.
But if you’ve ever used a phone or tablet to browse the Internet, you know just how frustrating it can be to arrive on a site that isn’t compatible. Pages take forever to load, images appear distorted, and it’s nearly impossible to locate the information you want. It doesn’t make you want to stay on the site for more than a few seconds, and it certainly doesn’t give you a great first impression of the business who operates it.
With responsive design, your site visitors will never experience these issues. When potential clients in need of information about addiction treatment land on one of your pages, they’ll be able to quickly find what they’re looking for. And although this is important for any business, it’s especially important in one where the information you provide can have a huge impact on potential clients’ lives.
As of May 2015, more Google searches take place on mobile devices than computers. An increasing amount of today’s consumers use smartphones to look up general information as well as learn about businesses before contacting them – and you can bet that your potential clients are among them.
But now that Google considers mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor, you can only reach this large portion of searchers if your site is compatible with their devices.
In the early days of smartphones, site owners addressed this issue by creating separate mobile sites. However, this not only creates a diminished experience for your visitors, but also requires a lot more work to maintain.
With responsive design, your rankings will never be negatively affected in mobile search. In fact, if your competitors’ sites aren’t mobile-friendly, you could even edge them out.
Google is increasingly favoring factors that determine a good user experience in their ranking algorithms. Some of these factors include click-through-rate (CTR), bounce rate, time on site and site engagement.
These factors are significantly improved with a website that is responsive for mobile. One example of responsive websites improving user experience is the impact it has on page speed. Responsive website designs can result in pages loading quickly – which Google is continuing to value with recent algorithm updates. From a user perspective, page load speed counts, and a mere second could be the difference of a user sticking around or jumping back to the search results.
Utilizing a responsive website design also is cheaper and easier to maintain than alternatives, such as two websites (one for desktop and one for mobile) or a desktop site that looks small on mobile applications. In the long-run, the time and money savings of a responsive site can be significant.
If your rehab center’s website isn’t responsive, you could be missing out on potential clients using mobile devices. Contact us today to learn how WebFX can create a responsive, user-friendly site for your business!