Is Responsive Web Design Worth It?
Tuesday, 5th March 2013
.webp "Is Responsive Web Design Worth It?")
The redesigned, responsive Schofield and Sims web site has been live for just over a month now, so I thought it would be interesting to see if the sales figures back up our belief that a responsive site will improve revenue from mobile devices.
Schofield and Sims are an educational publisher, they sell primary school level books to schools, to tutors and to parents and have been doing so since 1901. We designed their new web site to be responsive, so that the ever expanding mobile audience would find the site as easy to use and to order from as desktop users.
.jpg)
We built the site on a fluid grid that would shrink or expand or to any size screen, and we added breakpoints when the design required them. We made sure the buttons (especially the "add to cart" buttons) were touch-friendly. We didn't hide anything from mobile users, and we set the mobile navigation to kick in at anything less than 900 pixels.
So Does Responsive Web Design give you a Return on your Investment?
The new site went live on the 29th of January, so using Google analytics I compared last month (1st to 28th February) with the 1st to 28th January. The figures show that:
- mobile visits were up 16%
- mobile orders were up 25%
- mobile revenue was up 73%
These are real people, real schoolteachers, real tutors or real parents, who really are shopping on their tablets or phones.
Without objective data it can be hard to justify to a client that they should not only shell out for a new web site, but for a new responsive web site, and so I'm chuffed to bits that these early figures justify a mobile-friendly, responsive e-commerce web site.
