4 Keys to Unlock The Value of Mobile: Go the Responsive Design Route

Consumers are rapidly migrating to mobile, and expecting the same user experiences and capabilities they have on desktop via tablet and smartphone. Consider the following statistics:

• 25% of mobile consumers shop online via smartphone or tablet only (Prosper Mobile Insights)


• Mobile accounted for 21% of all online usage last year (Smart Insights)


• Time spent on mobile devices has nearly tripled just since 2011 (eMarketer)

If your business is looking to maintain success and performance, making your site mobile-friendly is no longer an option. But mobile is still uncharted territory for many expert developers, who are struggling to implement and optimize mobile on both the front and back-end.

This blog series will cover 4 strategies to help you successfully create a seamless, high-performance mobile experience:

• Go the responsive design route


• Make your mobile experience more social


• Continuously text and optimize


• Pay attention to mobile identity

Part 1: Go the Responsive Design Route

When building a mobile experience, developers are faced with two choices: mobile website or responsive design.

Mobile sites require developers to duplicate their existing sites, hurting SEO as search engines must index two separate pages. Not to mention, recreating an entire site to fit within a 4-inch screen often results in limited and disjointed user experiences that don’t render well on mid-size tablets.

We recommend that developers go the responsive design route, which is built on a single codebase and offers flexible content delivery by automatically adjusting to users’ individual screens. Responsive design also allows you to build your site on a mobile-ready framework, like Twitter’s Bootstrap or Zurb’s Foundation, to help simplify the mobile development process.

Although you must invest some time to learn the markup used by your chosen framework, this will save you time and headaches when it comes to building your site. Mobile-ready frameworks also enable a more polished look and feel and seamless user experience.

When using responsive design, it’s important to incorporate site elements that don’t just look good, but also make the mobile experience feel native. For example, Social Login reduces barrier to entry across your site, but is particularly useful on smaller mobile screens, as it enables users to register and login with a single tap via their existing social media accounts.

For more information about creating meaningful mobile experiences, download our free white paper, 3 Ways to Create an Effective Omni-channel Marketing Strategy.

4 Keys to Unlock The Value of Mobile: Go the Responsive Design Route