Mobile Responsive Sites...

Technology has changed massively over the past 5 years. More and more people are accessing the web via a mobile device.
If you are building a new website today, would you even consider NOT making it a responsive site for mobile and just concentrate on a site for larger screens?
Take forums for example, most are still not mobile compatible.
What considerations do you take when crating a new site?
Is the age range you are targeting your main concern?

 

Today it is very necessary that if you want to make a website, its support all devices other than desktop. Today most of people use mobile for internet and its growing continuously. If you are serious with your business and want to grow it, you must accept what people want.

 

Responsive is 100% the way to go. China has already more mobile device users vs having a Desktop or Laptop at home and the same is happening in many places. Responsive is the new norm and you will almost always benefit by opting for it.

 

If your website is optimised for mobile viewing, you are leaving a lot more money on the table. Even Google has recognized this trends and would love more websites being mobile friendly.

 

I almost want to say that you should design for Mobile, Tablet then PC.

 

Yes, I think that it is really important to make your website much comfortable to use for every user and if you decided to transform your site into mobile respinsive site you should create a button that can change view into full web page because sometimes the content is not full.

 

Honestly, I think every website out there needs to seriously consider the need to be mobile responsive. More and more people are strictly accessing the web through phones and tablets in every day life. If your site is not optimized for mobile viewing the possibility of losing that business is very high. It goes hand in hand with needing information here and now... if you do not have the means to answer to the "immediacy" trend you are likely hurting yourself significantly.

 

Looking at making your website mobile friendly = how you can make the functions of your site usable on mobile phones, not just the aesthetics of it.

 

It is very important to have a responsive site now, as everyone is using new devices. I have noticed many older generations are adapting to touch devices, particularly iPad and Kindles - so you honestly can't avoid it. No matter what niche you are in, you will have mobile visitors and the amount of mobile visitors will only increase as more people use their phones.

I use Google search on my phone and look up new websites at least 10 times a day - and I mainly use my phone to check email. It is very annoying when I have to zoom in and out of a webpage because it is not responsive. It is usually a simple job to convert a standard desktop site into a mobile-friendly site..

 

I can say that having a mobile responsive site is a "must" regardless who one's target audience is for nowadays it's a fast paced world almost everyone have their gadgets and gizmos to access and search the worldwide web.

 

What's going to happen is mobile devices will continue to get bigger and bigger. My wife is into ebay and etsy and she totally hates managing her accounts via her cell phone on those sites. Too inconvenient and time consuming.

Most importantly there are still not too many advertisers who'd throw their money away into the cell phone drain. I advertise extensively on Bing Ads and AdWords and I either completely disable cell phone ads or put them at -75% of CPC. The cell phone conversion rate is almost always horrendously low.

I am maybe on the wrong side of history but something tells me that it is cell phones that need to be able to accommodate a normal site design, not the other way around.

 

I think that you have gotten it right, @qwikad.com. There is going to be a convergence, ultimately, that accommodates human fingers, human eye range and more. It may involve projection of both display and virtual keyboard or it may involve a change in hardware size. Or it could be a combination of the Google Glasses and iWatch. I recently saw an analyst's projections that said tablet sales are plateauing and he was expecting growth in laptops again because they were what worked well for people. Smaller is not always better and I think that the pendulum might just swing back in another direction.

That said, I do not want to forsake the mobile market as my main focus is IT buyers and they are probably primarily mobile users. But I shudder at the thought of the cost and effort that would be involved with making my poor old ecommerce site mobile responsive. So, I will just sit here continuing to whistle past the dark...

 

I somewhat agree. But personally I would hesitate before assuming the mobile conversion rate is horrendously low. If you're capturing a lead perhaps they are more inclined to call... and if you are generating a sale perhaps the mobile device is where they initially found your site that sparked their interest and lead to a sale from their computer. There is a LOT of untraceable metrics when you try to monitor conversions on a mobile device.

 

there should never be a blanket statement as there isn't a one-for-all solution/method. We are living in a multivariate environment.