Responsive web design isn’t the silver bullet that will magically make your site faster, increase conversions or manage your content. But responsive design can provide a best in class experience for marketers and consumers interacting with content on smartphones, tablets and desktops.
Technology advances are disrupting ‘business as usual,’ but too many organizations are looking for a solution that wraps everything up in a tidy bow. What modern marketers need to remember is technology can’t displace strategy. Organizations need to recognize an approach is only as strong as the plan to optimize the customer experience. Buying a new pair of running shoes won’t make you run faster, but a dedicated training plan where you run longer, eat better, and continuously make adjustments to how you run probably will.
Like running shoes, a responsive website can only do so much. Making over a site to work better across all devices means taking responsibility for what is going to show up on that site. Karen MccGrane suggests, “responsive design won’t fix your content problem—but content strategy will” in her article of the same name. She details how responsive design paired with a content strategy is a must and she acknowledges that “smart companies will seize the opportunity to do what they should have done years ago: clean up and pare down their desktop content.”
Having a site that works well across all devices will only be valuable if it improves the customer experience by delivering relevant content. Company’s need to consider context and environment when developing, creating and publishing content to their website. All flash and no substance is not the place to be. Organizations need to pay great attention to both tactical and strategic objectives. They should look outward and determine:
- What do we want users to do—engage or transact?
- Will the site deliver the information they need to take action?
- Is the content relevant?
They also need to look inward and assess how consumers interact with content on a smartphone vs. a desktop vs. a tablet. Some considerations may be:
- What is threshold for the length of article/content being read on devices? How many clicks to source.
- How conversions compare on different devices?
- What impact do images have on speed? Do they detract or add to the experience.
The beauty the digital age is that these factors can be measured and monitored and adjusted as necessary to improve the performance of the site. Realistically organizations need to recognize not everything can be done at one time, but fortunately sites are fluid and not static! A well thought out plan should include company objectives and ways to manage and measure against these deliverables. It will go a long way to ensuring an investment in responsive design is money well spent.
Although responsive web design isn’t a silver bullet, it can help propel organizations ‘ahead of the curve’ and improve the performance of their website if they take responsive for what it is—a platform that can help improve the bottom line with the aid of strategy and planning.
