-Over the last few years Google has implemented a new change to their algorithm that gave responsive websites a little spike in their Google juice.  If your site was responsive, you would show a little higher in the rankings above websites that were not responsive. This was a major shift and brought awareness to millions of website owners to the fact that they had absolutely no idea what a responsive website even was.

While the implementation of responsive website is far from simple, the concept is not complicated at all: a responsive website adapts to the size of the screen where it’s being displayed.  Many folks immediately connected the dots and thought “mobile friendly”. While this is one part of a responsive website, “mobile friendly” is still thinking too narrowly. A truly responsive website is one that fits perfectly from every screen size from a desktop to a tablet to phone.  

We fielded a number of requests at the time to convert non-responsive websites to be responsive.  The unfortunate truth for many website owners is that converting a non-responsive website requires a ground-up build.  In other words, they needed a new website.  

A responsive website begins in the design phase.  We produce screen size-dedicated designs (ie desktop, tablet and mobile) demonstrating how the website will adjust at each size.  This opens the door for a significant level of creativity. We engage users based on their device ensuring that no one gets left behind zooming in or out or missing calls to action or encountering difficulties navigating.  Once the design is approved, we move to the development phase where we build out the responsive code.   

The beauty of a responsive WordPress site is that it involves little to no additional effort for administrators.  The same field you update in the backend is automatically spit out on the front-end based on the responsive designs.  All the work is happening behind-the-scenes.

Luckily today, most pre-built themes and custom themes are built responsively.  In fact, we will not engage a project that does not require responsive design or development.  It is one of the few hard requirements we place on the intake process.