Why are we making the website responsive?
What is a responsive website?
A responsive website is a flexible one that works across all platforms, screen sizes and orientations, and responds to the user’s behaviour (e.g. screen tilting).
Fluid, proportion-based grids are used with flexible images, thus providing optimal user experience across all devices. Josh Clark’s Content is like water illustration is useful to explain this concept.
The University’s new homepage is responsive.
As opposed to the Current staff page, which is not.
Why is responsive important?
The following facts speak for themselves.
Strength in numbers
More than a billion people worldwide now own or have access to at least one smartphone and one-quarter of all global web searches are conducted on mobile or tablet devices. The University’s website traffic reflects this global trend, with 29% of all visits in 2015 being made from a mobile device.
Improved user experience
Research has shown that 57% of mobile users will abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
If your website is not mobile-friendly you will have an extremely high bounce rate for mobile users (bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your page within a second of visiting).
Search ranking penalties
Google now penalise non-responsive websites, depreciating their search ranking.
How do you know if your site meets their mobile-friendliness criteria? They’ve created a website that will tell you.
Still not convinced?
Just try navigating the Current staff page on your mobile.