Responsive web design should I bother? If it isn’t broke don’t fix it?

[whitbycottages]

One of my new businesses is letting holiday cottages and on a few occasions expert web designers have suggested that I should have a redesign because my Dreamweaver website is looking dated and maybe not the best navigation system. The website started off a couple of years ago with one cottage owned by me and I designed the website and I’m certainly not the professional by any means. http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/

The only reason I have not invested in a redesign ( although I’m thinking of it once again seriously at the moment ) is because the website has developed into a small letting agency now with eight properties and it’s doing okay with reasonably good search engine listings achieving good occupancy rates on most of the properties.  The feedback from people booking cottages is often complimentary regarding how they visualise the properties.  I  get the feeling this could be because the subject of this website is old world cottages in at old characterful fishing port and possibly the people booking holidays like the personal unpolished website approach, rather than the larger faceless but professionally designed agencies websites,  if you get my meaning.

In the future of the company grows I can see how will have no choice but have professional template and navigation structure that maybe at this stage it’s just not worth doing?

I’ve attached a snapshot of my analytics which shows that when social media like Facebook traffic look at the website there is slightly more people are using mobiles and desktop computers but they seem to stay a similar period of time a look at a similar number of pages so there must be finding site navigation reasonable.

What do you think would you go for a redesign at this stage and if so what would be the major advantages?

analytics.JPG

[TakeshiYoung]

Creating a specific website for mobile users, whether by responsive design or dynamic serving is going to result in a better user experience than just serving the regular version of your site, even if it's just making the font bigger and the buttons a little easier to click on. As mobile adoption grows in usage, you will probably want to consider mobile design.

If you go into Google Analytics, and go to Audience -> Mobile -> Overview, it will show you the percentage of your traffic that is mobile, and their usage metrics. Based on those numbers, you can determine whether a mobile re-design is worth the resources at this time.

[whitbycottages]

Thanks for your detailed response and I understand.

The percentage of traffic using mobile at the moment’s seems to be almost 50% of the total traffic and they seem to stay slightly less time on the site. The site seems reasonably okay to navigate on my mobile but obviously I can see to compete with the competition I’ll have redesign at some point.

I wonder how many of our Moz members' websites have invested in a mobile version are a responsive design version of their business websites..

[TakeshiYoung]

50% sounds pretty significant. Responsive design is a great solution for news sites, blogs, and other sites with relatively simple user requirements. If users do more than just read content on your site, I'd recommend going with dynamic serving for a more tailored mobile experience.

[KeriMorgret]

Obviously Moz is in a different industry than cottage rentals, but one of the biggest things we heard about our redesign was that it was not responsive and did not render well on mobile devices. At least for our audience, they've come to expect that the site will be usable on something besides just their primary computer.

From the perspective of a small business owner though, I get you. I wouldn't imagine too many people are interested in ordering a USS Iowa hull from their phones, but I could be wrong. In your case, I would think it would depend on how far in advance people book your cottages. If there are some available with only a few days of notice, I would think having a site that works well for mobile would help when people are on a holiday and looking for their next place to stay.

[whitbycottages]

I did notice that there was a comment asking somewhere else why the new design on Moz was not responsive, I’m surprised I wonder why this wasn’t used.

I recently started a social media campaign and notice an increase in the percentage of mobile users, in comparison to general Google search users which is slightly lower percentage. I must admit I’ve not checked in fine detail how user-friendly my website is on my android phone, it seemed quite easy to navigate between pages and even to book using a service called data blocker but I will do some research because I can see that even sleights increases in usability regarding mobile users would probably make the  process of searching the properties and booking easier and more attractive.

Also check out the competition and see how their websites are performing on mobile.

I never use my mobile to search on the Internet personally set something up not deeply considered and I was just putting out the question to see what the people’s feelings were regarding the subject and make their own experience of responsive design from their websites.

[whitbycottages]

The website is mainly just about reading text are looking at pictures there is a service using a data blocker for a provisional booking. I’ve never heard of dynamic serving so I’ll look into that.

[GregFindley.co.uk]

Hi Alan,

One option you might not have considered is buying a pre-buiilt premium responsive theme, either as HTML/CSS templates, or a Wordpress theme, then customize the design to suit from there. Some of the big theme marketplaces like ThemeForest have premium themes focused on holiday rentals, so I can imagine you'll find something suitable. This should reduce your costs quite a lot, whilst still allowing you to keep up with the competition.

Let me know if you would like any further advice on this.
All the best, Greg