Category: Business

Over the last decade or so, the way we use and interact with the internet has changed massively – in many ways driven by the launch of the (at the time ground-breaking) iPhone. 

Nowadays, it’s almost impossible to remember a time when we didn’t all have smartphones, but Apple’s invention has served to transform modern communications – and the internet itself. 

Indeed, the iPhone would even bring about the demise of Adobe Flash and drive the move to more modern coding techniques like HTML5 and CSS.

The rise of mobile internet

The use of mobile devices to access the net has been steadily growing for many years and mobile internet traffic now accounts for over 50% of all web traffic. However, as our range of devices continues to grow, it’s now more important than ever that web content can adapt to different screen sizes to be viewed effectively – a process enabled by so-called Responsive Format web design.  

Ways to check if your website is responsive

A very simple test of a site’s responsiveness is to view it across different screens – everything from your cellphone to tablet, or even your connected TV. A responsive site will look good on each, with text and graphics expanding or contracting to sit comfortably within the frame. 

Before the introduction of CSS and HTML5, websites used to be built using formatted tables with fixed dimensions that made it impossible to scale content. If you find your site looks odd on different screens, enlisting the services of a local web designer will help isolate the issues and allow you to formulate a plan to port your content over to a new responsive design.

Other reasons why responsiveness is so important

If you don’t change the formatting of your site to a responsive design, you risk alienating users visiting your site on different devices – or losing them altogether. However, there are other very important reasons to move to a responsive design, including:

Google: As early as 2015, Google openly proclaimed it would be prioritizing mobile-friendly sites over non-responsive designs. Always a company with its finger on the pulse of technology, Google could see the dramatic rise in mobile traffic and moved to accommodate it better within its services – to the point it now actively penalizes old designs by reducing the ranking in its Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Bottom line: if you’re to stand any hope of generating traffic from Google, you need to move to a responsive design.

Responsiveness is cost-effective: In the early days of mobile growth, it was commonplace for web developers to produce two versions of the same site – one for device use and one for larger screens. Moving to responsive format means you need only have one website, cutting development time and fees.

Website management: Again, going back to the early days of web development, it used to be the case clients would have to approach their development company to make changes to their site. Nowadays, by using a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress in tandem with a responsive design, clients can make changes to content or add/delete pages without having to call on their developers.

Social media marketing is something that seems to have gone beyond being a simple alternative form of marketing and now feels like it’s in a category of its own. It is a technique that almost all businesses like to partake in due to the sheer number of people on the various platforms available. 

However, while it’s something that seems so inviting due to the low-cost nature of it and the precedent that has been set by those before you, it’s still something that has its own myriad of pros and cons. It will do you well to be aware of what these are before you plunge in with two feet, knowledge is power, after all, and in business, it’s all about being in as advantageous a position as possible.

The Cons

It’s best to get the bad news out of the way; being aware of what the potential cons are first can help avoid nasty surprises further down the road. First of all, due to the public forum type of format that social media tends to function around, it is possible for your business to develop some bad press through unfortunate interactions with users of the platform. This might be due to something out of your control that they’re saying or something that your business has posted that has been interpreted in a way that you didn’t intend. Either way, as easy and casual as social media can feel, it’s important that you’re careful when writing your posts and ensure that you read them thoroughly before committing. 

There are more specific problems that you might encounter as well, from a range of sources that you might not expect. For example, while the social media platforms are what you’ll be working with, your prospective customers and audiences might be viewing these via use of their smartphones, which have their own issues to contend with. You might find, for example, that your social media advertising is affected by iOS 14 updates, so it’s important that you’re once again as informed as possible before you begin. 

The Pros

However, as you’ve undoubtedly heard, there are a huge plethora of positives that you can enjoy through the use of these platforms for marketing your business. As stated before, the large user count and low cost of entry already provide you with a worthwhile incentive to get on board, and seeing how so many businesses are already established on social media surely shows that there’s something to be gained there. 

It might be worth focusing your efforts on a particular social media platform, as you might find that each platform available has a different type of audience which might mean that your business is more suited to one than another. Doing ample research can help you to make the strongest debut possible, keeping your expectations in check, and knowing how you’ll use the platforms in such a way to maximize their potential can help to give you the edge that you need to succeed and stand among your peers.