What Is Responsive Web Design?
Responsive web design takes into consideration the screen size and visual orientation of a website. It is a platform that automatically adjusts to fit on any screen size including a desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone. It some ways you need to develop the site for those 4 unique screen sizes. In all, responsive web design is a simple concept to understand, but realistically developing a site that looks great on all 4 major screen types can be challenging.

How Do I Know If a Site Is Responsive?
Have your ever pulled up a website on your Android or iPhone and it was just a very tiny rendering of the desktop version? You probably needed to zoom in and out, swiping the scroll bar to the left and right to try to read text or see an image. That site was not responsive.

Growing Trend of Mobile Web Traffic
The reason why this is important for your business is the growing trend of mobile user traffic on websites. Nearly 60% of website traffic is comes from mobile devices, which includes tablets and smartphones. And this percentage is expected to grow each year. Here’s the bottom line, if you’re not providing a truly mobile friendly experience for your current and prospective customers, your company is at a major disadvantage.

Google Survey Results
In a survey conducted by Google, 72% of mobile users said it is important that sites they visit be mobile friendly. If they find a website to be frustrating to navigate, they will quickly leave that site for another that is mobile friendly. This represents a lost opportunity for those businesses with standard sites.

SEO Benefits of Responsive Web Design
Speaking of Google and other top search engines, they prefer responsive websites since their spiders find these types of sites easier to crawl. The benefits are increased SEO and enhanced search rankings, which means more potential customers finding your website.

Before deciding if having a responsive website is right for your business, please note that a great looking and highly functional responsive website takes careful planning from the very start. Once again, in some ways, the responsive site is designed 4 times, each for a desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone. What is essential in this process is keeping the user experience central to every decision that will be made.

Hiring A Company To Design Your NEW Website
There are hundreds if not thousands of layout and coding options available today. Just remember that all of your decisions will have an impact on the end user. It’s important to keep that user experience in mind at all times. If you are going to hire a company to design your company’s new site or redesign your existing one, make sure they are experienced in developing responsive websites.

Having a responsive website was once considered a luxury. Now it is essential, with long term implications for your business or organization.

Growth of Social Media
It is truly amazing how big social media is today and how it has become a truly powerful marketing tool in this country and around the world. The increased use of mobile phones has led to continued growth of social media across all age groups. We’ve recently read that 40% of all cell phone users do social networking on their phone, with 28% of them doing so on a daily basis. Social media is growing by the day and should be a part of your marketing plan.

Lesson To Be Learned
There is a precautionary tale to share with you in that it takes a considerable amount of time to run a social media platform. The more channels you choose, the more tasks and posts you will have to do. If you or your staff will not have enough time to commit to a large number of social media channels, do not choose more than you can handle.

Our Suggestion
Our suggestion to to pick the social media channels that best match your company’s brand, target audience, and overall marketing goals. Yes, it is possible to have too many social media channels for your business. Take time to compare the advantages and disadvantages of each of the available channels and choose only a few that you will make a true commitment to.

So Now What?
After you have decided the social media channels on which your business will focus, it’s time to create a social media plan. We suggest writing out your plan for the year and then reviewing and adjusting it on a quarterly basis. If you don’t write it down, time will go by so quickly that you will miss opportunities simply because you are busy running your company. Remember, your plan and activities need to focus on things that your target market will be interested in, rather than just another outlet for your company’s promotional efforts.

Here are our Top 10 Social Media channels for your business:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Google+
4. LinkedIn
5. Instagram
6. Pinterest
7. YouTube
8. Tumblr
9. Flickr
10. Foursquare

Today, people are accessing the Internet from their tablets and smartphones more than ever before. The use of mobile devices is expected to grow at an astounding rate for the foreseeable future.

The problem this presents to companies is that most websites on the Internet are not optimized to work on mobile devices. In fact, screen sizes on mobile devices continue to change. It is critical for your website to adapt to these ever changing screen sizes today and well into the future.

Mobile users do not have any patience in navigating through websites that is not mobile friendly. What a shame it would be if your new potential customers that went to your site first are lost to a lessor competitor simply because their website was mobile friendly and yours was not.

The solution to your dilemma is to have a responsive website designed for your business. The key element to this kind of site is that its layout automatically changes to a device’s screen size.

Before you jump into a decision, know that an attractive and versatile responsive website takes great planning from the very beginning. That means placing your central focus on user experience, which includes testing and refining that experience on a desktop computer, laptop, tablet and smartphone. In some ways, the responsive site is designed in 4 ways.

A responsive website can provide your business with a number of coding and layout options that can become mind boggling and overwhelming at times. Just remember that all of your decisions will have an impact on the end user. It’s important to keep that in mind at all times.

Here are the Top 5 reasons why your business should have a responsive website:

1. Mobile usage continues to increase – responsive websites are geared towards smartphone users.
2. If you don’t have a responsive site, there is a 61% chance a visitor will leave your site if they find it frustrating in any way.
3. A user-friendly responsive website can increase your conversion rates while lowering your bounce rates.
4. Responsive design is the preferred web design format for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with search engines like Google.
5. Responsive websites adjust their formatting automatically for different screen sizes today… and into the future.