If you look at the services of most BigCommerce designers, you’ll pretty much always find that a responsive website is on offer. But why is that? Why is a responsive design so important?
Well, the answer to that question relates to the experience that people get when viewing your site through smartphones, tablets and laptops. In the modern day, you’ll find all kinds of internet-connected devices in the home, meaning that websites need to cater for it.
If yours doesn’t, you are potentially losing out on a lot of business.
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Consistency Is Key
So, if you haven’t worked it out already, when BigCommerce designers create a responsive website, they’re ensuring that shoppers get the same, consistent experience, no matter what kind of device they’re using to access the web.
A responsive website will be able to identify the device that you’re using to view it and then adjust itself to display nicely on it. It’s not always perfect, but this is typically achieved using what can be loosely described as a grid, with content able to be rearranged to suit the display.
The orientation is the biggest challenge that needs to be addressed, as smartphones are usually viewed via a vertical aspect, with devices like laptops having a horizontal one. This means that when displayed on a phone, you’ve got less room to work with.
An effectively-designed responsive site will display the best possible version of the site for that device and also do the same for all other devices.
How Responsive Design Compares to Adaptive Design?
BigCommerce Designers also create what’s known as websites with ‘Adaptive Design’, which is essentially a more basic version of the responsive format. What a site like this does is have a number of pre-set aspect ratios and fixed layouts and then match the device to the closest one.
The reason why this is a slightly inferior option when compared to responsive design is that when there’s a variation in size of device (usually when using smartphones and tablets), there might not be a good size match available, meaning that a choppy experience is offered.
A Smoother Customer Experience
Conversely, responsive design allows the website to perfectly match its dimension and layout to the device in question. The result of this is the site looks amazing, regardless of the device or the variations in size you might encounter from brand to brand.
Customers in the 2020s expect nothing less than a website that fits the screen they’re looking at. Most households will have all types too and won’t accept a browsing experience that’s anything less than perfect. If that’s what they get, they’re likely to try another website.
However, when your site offers the kind of smooth customer experience we’ve described, you get lower bounce rates, higher conversion rates and an increased bottom line.
Trust the BigCommerce Designers – Responsive Sites Are Vital
The number of websites you’ll find now that aren’t responsive is getting smaller by the day, which tells you an awful lot about why yours should be. There aren’t many, but they’re still out there and they tend to offer a less-than-perfect experience.
So, when your web designer tells you that your new site needs to be responsive, you should listen to what they’ve got to say, as anything else just makes your site less competitive.
