More and more websites today are making use of responsive design. With so many people using mobile devices for surfing the web, having a responsive design that can work with mobile can help you quite a bit. Customers often find it difficult to try to navigate traditional pages on mobile devices, and they may not always be able to find the information they want because they have to attempt to scroll around the page. When you have an ecommerce site and you are trying to make sales, this is a very poor practice. You need to have your site be as simple to use as possible no matter what platform the customers are using to view it.
Benefits of Using Responsive Design
This is still relatively new territory for ecommerce sites, but it is better to be ahead of the curve, as you can start skimming some customers away from the competition since you have a better quality and easier to use site for their mobile browsing and buying needs. Some might feel that designing mobile specific sites is a better solution, but when you have a large ecommerce website with many category and product pages, this could be far from ideal. It would essentially entail the creation of another site. The time and expense to do is too much for most. Using a responsive design is simply easier.
When you have just a single set of URLs, rather than URLs for your mobile site and your traditional site, you will see that it benefits your SEO as well. Google, the most popular of the search engines, also likes responsive sites simply because it is less work for their robots that search and index the sites.
Disadvantages of Responsive Design
While using responsive design will likely be the best choice for most sites, and it certainly is the future, that does not mean it is without some disadvantages. One of the biggest of these disadvantages is that it could cause the pages to load a bit more slowly on mobile devices. Still, the time it takes is not so great that it would turn customers away. It is worth researching and testing though, just to make sure that the pages from your ecommerce website are loading quickly enough.
Responsive design websites for ecommerce shops are going to be even more important in the future than they are right now. Most will find that the responsive sites are a better option than specific mobile sites for the store. However, it may be a good idea to consult with the professionals at Appath to determine what the best course of action will be for your ecommerce website. Different companies may have different and better results with other solutions.
In time, as the cost for responsive design comes down and as the technologies start to allow for faster page loading, it seems likely that more ecommerce sellers will start to embrace it. Even now, it is worth exploring the option of using responsive design sites.
Summary:
People are constantly using their mobile devices to access the web today for surfing, shopping, and more. Companies have two choices for making sites for mobile devices. They can create an entirely different mobile site for their mobile visitors, or they can create a responsive design for the site. Responsive styles websites are becoming more popular because they tend to provide better unity and they are better for SEO. However, it is important for all companies, especially ecommerce websites hoping to keep customers, to consider the pros and cons of responsive sites. Make sure the design you choose is easy to use and provides a good browsing and shopping experience.
Resource: http://www.getelastic.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-responsive-design-for-ecommerce/