Responsive websites

Remember when the budget airlines first came along, and trying to book a flight on a webpage where you had to scroll far, far left to the drop down menu, choose your departure airport, press return and be flung back to the top left hand corner, and go through the whole process again to select your destination? Perhaps it’s my age, because my children would laugh at that now. Although it’s not as rare to find as you may think, the non-responsive website. The annoying one that doesn’t fit a variety of device sizes and screen pages. The website that you leave within moments of landing on from the search engine results.

So now it’s the moment of truth: call up your website on your phone or tablet.  Can you read it, is the font size large enough not to have to squint or expand the page by zooming in.

(Above, the beautifully, responsive designed Abbotts Wills website by our team here at Cariad Marketing in mobile and tablet view)

Has the page adjusted to fit the screen size of the device you are using? Try this on a variety gadgets at home, in the office, in the pub.

Now for example sake, imagine you run a scaffolding business and you are a client needing your services.  You are standing on a building site, with a group of clients and tradesmen alike, needing scaffolding services. The architect grabs his phone, types in scaffolding and bingo, you are at the top of Google.  Things couldn’t be going better for you so far.  He clicks into your website to find your phone number or online price calculator.  Hang on, he’s got to scroll around to get this, and with each swipe, the page is taking several moments to catch up on itself and re-upload. Pictures are squashed and overlap the page. He gets bored of this after the third time, and hits the back button. But he’d not worried, because your competitor is the next down on the list of scaffolders, and his phone number etc is immediately visible as the screen has ‘shrunk to fit’ his phone screen, and he’s away, calling them not you.

They are the calls you never know you missed and the repeat business for your competitors for which you may never have an opportunity to quote for.

Examples of great responsive websites include;

• cariadmarketing.com
• www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer
• www.abbottswills.co.uk

Convert that business, get responsive!