A responsive web design or a mobile-only website?

In SEO, mobile friendliness and responsive web design is a ranking factor. Majority of entrepreneurs are moving to either create a separate mobile website or going for a responsive web design. Most business entrepreneurs are in a dilemma to create a separate mobile website or for a responsive web design. Before we can independently look at the two and find out which option is the best for you, let us first understand what the two terms mean or stand for.

Responsive web design

Responsive web design makes it possible for your website to reformat pages depending on the types of device used – simply put, your website are able to be viewed via a desktop, laptop, tablet, iPad, or smartphones.

The merits of a responsive web design

• Improved user experience as visitors to your site can access it without any problems irrespective of the device they are using. It essentially enables users to have the same experience whether they are accessing your website from a desktop, a smartphone of any screen size or a tablet.
• Improved website ranking as you are using only one website, one HTML, one URL
• Ease of maintenance as you only need to deal with a single website
• You have greater control of your website

Mobile website

In mobile website, you get a separate mobile website to target visitors that use various devices such as smartphones and tablets in addition to your existing standard website that is viewed via desktop and laptops. Mobile friendly website benefits business, as people spend more hours on their mobile phones as opposed to the hours they spend on a desktop which makes business sense for any entrepreneur to invest in a mobile website.

The merits of a mobile website

• With a mobile website, users owning a Smartphone or tablet have better readability, an enhanced experience when it comes to viewing videos, pictures and an overall rich look
• A business is able to reach a wider audience considering that a great number of people access the internet nowadays using their mobile phones as compared to a desktop
• An opportunity to increase web ranking as Google takes into consideration mobile friendliness of a website as a ranking factor

In view of the above, let’s take a look at the comparative analysis

• Generally, creating a responsive web design is complex and time consuming as compared to creating a mobile website only.
• The cost of developing a mobile website is quite cheaper as compared to the cost of developing a responsive web design.
• As much as the initial cost of developing a responsive web design is high, there is no denying that maintaining it is quite cheaper and fairly simple.
• There are a number of SEO benefits in a responsive design.

The bottom line is, we cannot conclusively with conviction say which among the two is best suited for your business. The decision will ultimately depend on your business needs, tastes and preferences.