When it comes to your website, responsive design is now standard in 2021. Unlike other web design approaches, which are targeted towards specific devices, responsive design is universal and helps your potential customers access your content the way they see fit.
What is Responsive Web Design?
To put it simply, responsive web design is a design element that automatically scales web pages to fit any screen size and computer. The aim is to create web pages that automatically change in response to the website visitor’s screen size and orientation.
Here are some signs that you are on a responsive website:
- The text is easy to read without having to zoom in.
- There is enough space between each segment of the web page.
- Image sizes don’t surpass the width of the frame
- There is no horizontal scrolling.
Why is responsive design so important for your hearing practice website? Here are a few reasons.
Easier to maintain
Before responsive design, there were only two options available when it came to websites:
- Build a desktop website that would look tiny on mobile devices and be a nightmare to use.
- Spend lots of time and money to build a separate dedicated mobile site, built specifically for the browser of a smartphone.
The above choices increase the expense and time involved in maintenance. You also run the risk of missing out on potential mobile users and mobile-based sales if you only decide to build a desktop website. With responsive design however, we only need to update the site once, and this action will change all versions of the site, whether on a smartphone, a tablet, or a laptop.
Looks great on mobile
The number of users searching the Internet and accessing websites through mobile devices surpassed desktop users in 2016 and has never looked back. Since mobile use is the default, mobile users expect an optimal viewing experience on their devices. If you don’t have a responsive website, your website user will have no qualms about leaving your site and going to one of your competitors instead.
Responsive design means that your website users can conveniently and intuitively access your website, resulting in a smoother experience regardless of the device they use. This vastly increases the chances they are going to contact your office to set up a hearing consultation.
Google-approved!
Google’s chosen design pattern is responsive design since it does not produce two versions of the same site. Instead, it provides one site that adapts to suit a range of devices with the same URL and HTML file.
For a variety of reasons, Google is a big fan of this arrangement. To start, it offers an optimized user experience. Visitors access a single URL, and the website automatically adapts to suit their device screen. Moreover, for Google, it is more effective since they don’t have to crawl multiple sites to index your website.
Seamless viewing experience
We live in a world where not only are your sites accessed using several different devices and screen sizes, but the same customers come to your sites using these different devices at different times. This ensures that your sites must perform well, regardless of which device your potential customers might be using at a given time. To ensure continuity in the knowledge they are seeking, the same material that they have access to on one computer must be available when they return to other devices.
Suppose a customer visits your site on their laptop at the office, looking for information on your hearing aid services range. They then return to your site on their smartphone during the subway ride home but cannot find the same information (maybe because you chose not to provide it on a “mobile-only” version of the site).
In this case, that person will likely abandon your site and take their business elsewhere. You do your utmost to serve your customers by ensuring continuity of information across all platforms, but with a layout and experience appropriate for each screen size. Do not give them any excuse to leave your site halfway through their website visit!
Future-proof your website
One of the great things about a responsive website is that this practice offers you the best opportunity in the future to accommodate newer devices and screens. To better suit the screens used to access the web, responsive sites are fluid, scaling up or down as required.
This means that no matter what screen sizes are developed in the future, a responsive website will already accommodate them.
If you want your company to stand out among the other hearing aid practices in your area, why not contact us? Our team has the experience and expertise to help you create a unique, intuitive, and responsive website.