Responsive Magento website designs: Why is it necessary?

As a retailer, the success of your business relies on how well your audience accepts your products you put on display. If you take it one step further as a Magento e-Commerce retailer, it also relies on how well you can reach your audience on a digital level. It's foolish behaviour to not be constantly keeping an eye on the technology trends your audience is experience to adapt quickly. Therefore it's imperative that your online stores are optimised as responsive Magento website.

For a website to be responsive means that the interface can shapeshift it's design to cater for whatever screen size / design the website is being browsed on. There are many reasons why this is a crucial and necessary feature to have:

Reasons for a responsive Magento website

1. Mobile devices are taking over: The number of visitors viewing websites on varying devices compared to desktop computers is growing. A tremendous 40 - 50% of online traffic is mobile, and as this continued to skyrocket, it's a lot more important for online retailers to design a store that works well on all mobile devices.

2. Social is mobile: According to a study from ComScore, 55% of social media consumption happens on a mobile device. Therefore people are more likely to view and share content if it's mobile friendly - if a website isn't functioning or optimised for a smaller screen, users will simply get frustrated and leave. And since high bounce rates lead to low conversion rates, it'll reflect poorly on your business.

3. It's a no from Google: If the above two points weren't enough to convince you,  Google simply won't allow it. It's mobile algorithms, also known as Google Mobilegeddon, can sense that an unresponsive site will lead to unhappy users who will go elsewhere to browse. Therefore, there's no point displaying a website that will ultimately have a high bounce rate, when there are other Magento responsive websites that are more deserving of the spot.

How to optimise for a responsive Magento website:

In a Magento-sponsored Internet Retailer webinar, guest speaker Forrester Research, Inc. Analyst Mark Grannan stressed that aligning business and development goals will allow you to effectively build your responsive site. Taking time to analyse mobile traffic patterns, device priority lists and review your information and content will have a positive impact on the end design. Consider the following about your customers:

• What percentage of your site traffic comes through mobile devices? If yours is exceeding 20 - 30% then it's a good indication to consider optimising for a responsive Magento website.

• How are your customers accessing your site? Studies suggest trends matter less than the specifics of your site and your customer

• What devices/browsers does your customer population favour? Keep in mind that responsive Magento website designs are implemented using techniques that are incompatible with older browsers.

Going responsive: Tips for a successful creation

Mark Grannan expressed one challenge of a responsive web design is that its single codebase can be very large and slow to load. For an optimal mobile experience, Grannan shared the following advice:

• Load priority content first and late load ("lazy load") content below it to create the perception of faster performance, rather than waiting to display content after everything has finished loading.

• Use server-side technology to deliver or render images appropriately sized for the device.

• Code your site to reduce the number of round trips back to the server to reduce latency

• Consider using third party acceleration providers, like CDNs, to optimize performance through a range of technologies and local content caching.

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Acidgreen is an award winning e-commerce Magento Australia company with over 15 years of  industry experience. Our certified magento developers and designers are highly qualified to create aesthetically pleasing responsive magento websites that generate the highest amount of conversions and provide the best ROI. Look no further and get started with Acidgreen!