< Responsive Design - The Who, Where & What?

Blog

Responsive Design – The Who, Where and What?

Who should be listening to responsive design messages, blogs, posts etc? Basically, if you have a website the answer is you, this impacts anyone who has a business represented online. The stats in South Africa are staggering in terms of the number of cell phones in this country. The last figure was presented in 2011 and the number of mobile phones was 59 million compared to the 50 million people in South Africa. Many of these mobile phones will now be smart phones and that means they will have access to the internet. Mashable recently said this about mobile traffic, “Meanwhile, the shift to mobile is happening at an extraordinary speed. Today, 30% of Mashable’s traffic is mobile. By the end of next year, this may exceed 50%.” The figures should really be a cause for concern if your website is not mobile friendly.

Where exactly does responsive design play a part? The devices we should be aware of are tablets and mobiles. Tablet sales are set to skyrocket with projected figures of 100 million tablets to be sold in the US this year. As we know smart phones are everywhere so we need to match our marketing to the devices people are using. Unfortunately a lot of websites are not mobile/tablet friendly and end up looking terrible or are not user-friendly when viewed on different device screens. Responsive design isn’t just for mobile phones and tablets, it is also for adapting the view on pc browsers and laptops so that users can view websites with ease.

What is exactly is responsive web design? It all sounds great so far but what exactly is this functionality and how easy is it to apply to your website? “Back in the day” people built mobi sites which would appear something like m.mjmedia.co.za and that would have represented our mobile website and shown to people searching on their mobile phone. Now our website URL doesn’t change it is www.mjmedia.co.za and the responsive design code that is implemented on the website is used to determine how to show your website depending on the different device or browser people are using. The responsive design method can be applied to most websites by a web developer and any good web developer will build any new websites responsively.

Make sure you ask the right questions when building a website or alternatively ask a web developer if your current website can be upgraded. Remember to keep your website updated especially if it was built more than three years ago, it probably needs a refresh and this can be done in line with making it more responsive.

responsive design
Why have responsive designed websites?

Giselle Chelin

Giselle Chelin is co-owner of the internet marketing company MJ Media. She is fascinated by the on-going developments and improvements of internet marketing and aims to help businesses utilise this powerful marketing tool to its full potential. Connect with Giselle on Google+

Testimonials

Over the past 5 years, MJ Media have fine-tuned our online marketing platforms, improved our Google presence and increased our website visits and enquiries. The end result, leading to greater brand awareness and a growing business. It’s been an exciting journey!

Dale Horne, Symbiotix Group

Bridgette and Giselle have managed our Adwords account for over 12 months and have always provided excellent and efficient service with a flexible and proactive approach. We are very pleased at the results obtained so far and look forward to continuing our successful relationship with MJ Media. We would recommend MJ Media to any organisation seeking to outsource some or all its internet marketing requirements to a trustworthy and transparent supplier.

Rob Schofield, Director, RJ Retail Ltd, trading as WoodenToyShop.co.uk

MJ Media have been amazing since day one, they listen, they are patient and they give advice which is always the best, they are helping me grow my business. I have seen increased quote requests from our web site. MJ Media’s work on internet marketing has made a significant difference to my business. I appreciate the hard work that they put on our marketing and look forward to continuously working with them.

Gisela Oliveira, Mozambique Tourism

Vet Products Online has been operating effectively for 12 years, but this year I thought it was time to progress to the next step of online marketing and social networking. MJ Media was recommended to me to assist and manage Facebook and Google marketing. Bridgette and Giselle are two stars in their field, both professional and enthusiastic. Their support is reliable and their turn around time to requests, queries or project needs is speedy. We have certainly benefited positively from MJ Media input and I highly recommend them to other companies who have internet marketing requirements.

Anne Mullins, Owner, Vet Products Online, www.vetproductsonline.co.za

Bridgette and Giselle have been our online partners for about 4 years now. Flexible Workspace sells office space and related services in the B2B market and as the founder not only am I convinced that Online is the most effective channel for our offering but that MJ are the right service provider for us. Being a relatively small (but growing) business, we need to be nimble and they in turn need to be ready and geared to move with us – MJ gets this. Having access to the decision maker/driver of the business is also important to me – they have a personal touch that larger agencies are unable to replicate. Finally, and most importantly they produce results – from the time MJ took over our account they have increased our lead flow 5-fold. As a business owner this is all I’m interested in – lead generation and conversion – this is the real measure of Return on Investment and they have delivered in spades.

Brad Porter, Flexible Workspace