Responsive Web Design vs Mobile Website

In 2016, if your website is not mobile ready you need to change that today. Two main ways to make your site mobile is to either have a mobile sub-site or a responsive web design.

Why can’t I run my regular website on a mobile device?

It is possible for your regular online site to run on a mobile device but it is probably not a very good idea. The screen size of the device can dramatically affect the user experience and the overall look of your site.

User Experience Problems:
Your regular site will not be user friendly on a mobile device because everything will be too small. Mobile device users are using their fingers to navigate through your site. 

• Small Print and Images – User can’t read the content on your site
• Small Buttons and Menu – User can’t navigate through your site because the buttons and navigation menu is too small to properly touch with their fingers.

Site Design Problems:
Not only can the user not properly use your site but it will also not look very good which can turn away many users.

Design Flaws:
Zoomed out to fit site on screen causing all above user experience problems

          OR

Stays at size of desktop which causes only a portion to be on the screen at a time

Mobile Sub-Site

A mobile sub-site is an entirely separate site from your desktop site. It is usually prepended by a subdomain, such as “m.domain.com” or “mobile.domain.com”.

Pros

Better User Experience – Since it is a separate domain, you can very easily customize the site specifically for mobile users.

Faster Load Time – Since you can minimize the pages down for mobile, it will load faster than a responsive site.

Cons

Hurts Organic Search Traffic – Since this is a separate domain name, Google can get confused and badly affect your organic search traffic.

Hurts Search Link Equity – Search link equity is the in-bound traffic from links. Any links shared from your mobile site hurts your primary site’s search link equity since they are not added together.

Not Future Ready – There will be higher maintenance and expense to keep up another domain and there will be future reworking.

Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design is all done in the back-end code of your primary site to automatically re-size the site for mobile device users.

Pros

Better For SEO – Since there is only one domain name you do not have to worry about search result problems, complicated redirects, and lost link equity.

Future Ready – There will be no reworking the site to make it mobile since a responsive design is future ready.

Cons

Possible Slow Load – If you have a large site with large pages used on a desktop it will most likely load slow on a mobile device.

Need Different User Experience – Sometimes the user experience on a desktop may not be the same user experience you would like to give them on a mobile device. Most of the time a mobile user has different needs that a desktop user and you might want to tailor your site for those needs.

Chance of Error – There is a higher chance of errors since you need to have the proper code for it to render properly on a different screen size. Bad code can create a poor user experience.

Not sure if your site is mobile ready? Verify your site is mobile friendly here