Con­vinc­ing Small Busi­nesses To Start Us­ing Re­spon­sive Web Design

More and more peo­ple are us­ing smart phones or tablets to ac­cess the in­ter­net, and many busi­nesses do not re­al­ize how many peo­ple are ac­cess­ing their web­site through mo­bile devices.

Hav­ing an in­ter­ac­tive, re­spon­sive web­site that works with phones and tablets is essential.

Dis­cussing top­ics like in­creased use of mo­biles, men­tion­ing the fu­ture of their busi­ness, chang­ing the tide of bad num­bers, and read­ing be­tween the lines will help web de­sign­ers talk to busi­nesses about re­spon­sive web design.

Talk with your client

Be­fore web­site re­vamp­ing be­gins it is im­por­tant to see if the client wants a mo­bile pres­ence and to check the num­bers to see if their site vis­i­tors ac­tu­ally use mo­bile de­vices to look at their web­site. Google An­a­lyt­ics, for ex­am­ple, can show you a de­tailled break down of de­vices and screen sizes used by web site visitors.

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing with your client is ex­tremely im­por­tant when be­gin­ning busi­ness be­cause they know their cus­tomer base bet­ter than any­one; they will also be able to ex­press any prob­lems or con­cerns that they have been hav­ing with their website.

Of­ten older web­sites will be less re­spon­sive and that gives de­sign­ers a chance to dis­cuss mo­bile tech­nol­ogy. Cre­at­ing a re­spon­sive web­site will not only help users of desk­top PCs with dif­fer­ent screen sizes, but it will help those users us­ing mo­bile de­vices as well.

Other top­ics

A com­mon prob­lem that many peo­ple have when look­ing to redo their web­site is that clients want their web­sites to look big on both large and small screens. This is a re­sult of desk­top mon­i­tors be­com­ing larger and larger, which makes older (fixed width) web sites look small. For sev­eral years, when most screens had a 1024 pixel width, a fixed web site width of 960 pix­els was quite com­mon. In to­day’s larger (desk­top) screens that leaves a lot of empty space.

By ad­dress­ing this prob­lem, the mo­bile ques­tion doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily come up, but the ques­tion is an­swered by hav­ing a re­spon­sive website.

The fu­ture

Dis­cussing the fu­ture and trends in use of mo­biles is a great way for agen­cies to bring up re­spon­sive web de­sign, and it will help agen­cies to get ad­di­tional business.

But: talk­ing about mo­bile web de­sign tends to limit a client’s fo­cus to just tablets or phones. In that case it’s a good idea to re­mind the client that hav­ing a re­spon­sive de­sign will al­low the web­site to re­flow to any de­vice.

Busi­nesses big and small like hear­ing that even if they do not get a lot of mo­bile traf­fic right now, but if they have a re­spon­sive web site they may be able to draw in more busi­ness through the mo­bile plat­form. Also, hav­ing a re­spon­sive web­site al­le­vi­ates many other prob­lems for the client.

Chang­ing the tide

Clients, who are less than thrilled about pay­ing for mo­bile de­sign, of­ten have num­bers that show how few peo­ple ac­cess their web­site through mo­bile de­vices. Many busi­nesses who up­date their busi­ness web­site to be more re­spon­sive will see mo­bile num­bers go up. Hav­ing an im­proved ex­pe­ri­ence on one plat­form tends to have the same ef­fect on other platforms.

Talk­ing with pro­fes­sional web de­vel­op­ers can al­le­vi­ate any kind of ques­tion or con­cern that a busi­ness might have. For some busi­nesses who don’t want to hire a de­signer 1&1 web­site maker is a great way to im­prove their web­site and make it more responsive.

Read­ing be­tween the lines

By hav­ing a web­site that works on all plat­forms your clients will not only in­crease the ex­pe­ri­ence for their cur­rent cus­tomers but it will cre­ate new busi­ness; this fact of­ten gets over­looked be­cause it is so hard to measure.

Ac­cord­ing to the Tech­nol­ogy As­so­ci­a­tion of Iowa, 62% of busi­nesses who had de­signed a mo­bile spe­cific web­site saw an in­crease in sales. More and more peo­ple are ac­cess­ing in­for­ma­tion through mo­bile de­vices and hav­ing a re­spon­sive mo­bile web­site will pre­vent po­ten­tial cus­tomers from go­ing on to a competitor.

Busi­nesses are be­com­ing more aware that hav­ing a re­spon­sive web­site can lead to a bet­ter cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence. Web de­vel­op­ers can sell the ser­vice to busi­nesses, it’s a great an­gle to sell a web site re-de­sign and re-launch.