Tracerco has just launched their website in responsive design. Six months after revamping the entire design of the site it has now been adapted to be responsive including the Discovery^TM microsite. But what is responsive web design and why is it important?

Making a website responsive means it automatically adjusts its size and navigation to make it easier to use on a variety of different devices from desktop to smart phone and everything inbetween. There is much debate over whether a responsive site is the best route and after assessing our web traffic and our goals we opted for the responsive route. As well as the obvious benefit that having a responsive or mobile site makes life easier for users on portable and touch screen devices, responsive design has other benefit that made it attractive to Tracerco.

Responsive design helps with your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts. Google, who are the foremost authority on SEO, consistently appearing on and topping the top ten global parent websites at home and work (source; Nielsen), recommend responsive design (see Google). When a user searches on a mobile device Google will give a responsive site more authority and therefore a higher listing than a site which is not optimised for mobile users.

Increased smartphone and tablet ownership is another reason to put effort into making your site responsive. It makes sense to tailor your user experience to accomodate this new medium. PWC's Outlook series have analysed device sales and predicted future growth shown below.

As unit sales of these devices increase it is only logical to conclude that mobile and tablet search will also increase. Therefore in order for your content to be easily accessible to all your customers, responsive design is the way forward. 

Adobe has a great paper on responsive design best practice.

I hope this post was useful to you. If you would like to hear more from Tracerco marketing subscribe to the blog using the form opposite. We are always keen to improve user experience, so please take the time to give us feedback on our site.