The use of mobile devices has exploded in the last few years and it means that website design has needed to keep pace with all the changes. A few years ago as mobile usage started to explode all the major websites started to branch off into mobile versions specifically designed for viewing on small devices. You may have visited websites and seen the URL change to http://m.somedomain.com or http://somedomain.mobi, this is a dedicated mobile version of a website.
As you can imagine it’s not cheap or easy maintaining two versions of a website but thankfully it’s no longer required!
Statistics vary greatly on the topic of usage with some saying that mobile devices account for up to 85% of internet usage. Others suggest it’s closer to 65% and I find that with my own websites when looking at Google Analytics.
Regardless of the exact percentage it’s clear that ignoring mobile traffic is a very bad idea and would be equal to stopping every second customer access to your shop. Not a good idea!
Thankfully today it’s no longer required to have a mobile version of a website as lots of website designers now use AWD or RWD, or to the acronym impaired Adaptive Web Design and Responsive Web Design. They both basically mean the same thing, that the design of the website adapts or responds to the size of the screen the website is being viewed on.
A WordPress responsive design can be achieved using either HTML5 of JavaScript or even a mix of both but regardless of how the design is made the end result should be the same.
You can check to see if your existing blog is responsive by using this neat tool http://responsivetest.net/ or simply resize your browser window and see if your website responds to the change in size by resizing and reorganising the website content.
If you see horizontal scroll bars that’s a sure sign that your website isn’t using a responsive design. When in doubt use the tool provided or even get out your smart phone any pay your website a visit. On a small device like a phone you’ll need to zoom in to read text if your website isn’t responsive.
It can be very costly to convert an existing design to become a WordPress Responsive Design but thankfully WordPress makes it easy to search for new responsive themes by providing ‘Responsive’ as a search criteria when searching for a new theme from within WordPress.
Handy Tip: Not only should you make sure your website looks good on mobile devices but it’s important to make sure your SEO efforts are working for mobile too! Check out this great free tool to see how your websites does for mobile SEO http://www.feedthebot.com/mobile/
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