Responsive Design is in Hot List of Buzzwords, But For e-Commerce Too?

Take a look at Google Trends and you’ll see that responsive design is in the hot list of buzzwords right now. It has quickly become an effective solution for many websites to deliver a mobile friendly experience to their users. But how about responsive design for e-Commerce? When we talk about displaying product pages and payment checkout processes of an online store for user-friendly mobile shopping experience, is responsive design an effective solution?

The Mobile Shopping Experience

The primary purpose of an online shopping website is to increase sales by providing a website navigation and a checkout process that allows customers find and buy what they are looking for – quickly and easily. Therefore, the most obvious question that online shop owners have to ask themselves is what type of experience they should offer to mobile users in order to achieve this purpose.

The way online stores showcase their products and checkout process can have a huge influence on sales. It is important that product lists, search filters and the payment process are properly managed to allow mobile customers to complete a purchase.

Advantages with responsive design

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)If you are concerned about your online store’s ranking in search engine results, you’ll be glad to know that search engines such as Google actually recommend websites to use responsive design – mainly because having one URL for each page of your online store across all devices makes it easier for users to navigate your site. Moreover, using one URL prevents redirects from happening which reduce loading time, and allows search engine bots to crawl your website faster.
2. Good TimingIf you still haven’t launched your online store, you can easily have your website designed for responsive to nicely display products for both desktop and mobile website visitors. This helps you avoid the often difficult time- and money-costing process of redesigning several existing product pages for efficient responsive display.
3. Simple Product ListsIf you offer a small variety of products in just few categories and your products contain short descriptions, it will be easy to display them to mobile users with responsive design. When your desktop e-Commerce store is appropriately re-sized for mobile display, customers won’t be confused with complex category lists and long descriptions which do not look mobile-friendly.
4. Single Page CheckoutIf you offer a single-page checkout process for your online store, it will quite easy to make this process responsive in a way that won’t make mobile customers have an impression of a lengthy checkout process.

Disadvantages with responsive design for eStores

1. Bad TimingIf you already have a complex online store, implementing responsive design can be costly and time consuming. It’s likely that you will have to redesign your entire website to ensure that it fits the screen sizes of multiple devices.
2. Complex Product ListsIf your online store offers a huge variety of products with long descriptions, by going responsive you are likely to risk current customers with too much information on smaller screens and give them an unpleasant shopping experience. As an e-Commerce store owner you have to ask yourself if it makes sense to keep your product lists and descriptions friendly for desktop site or make them brief to maximize mobile sales.
3. Multi Page CheckoutIf you presently have a multi-page checkout process for your online store, moving your website to responsive design could prove to be highly challenging. In order to deliver the best mobile checkout experience, you will have redesign the entire checkout process for all devices.
4. ConclusionYou don’t really need Google Trends to know that responsive design is the buzzword. It has been very helpful for e-Commerce websites to effectively serve their mobile users, but it would be unfavorable for online stores to jump on it simply because that’s what is trending right now.

IntegraWeb is an e-Commerce design and development company in Halifax. With a special focus on UI / UX, we combine our knowledge and experience with your business goals to give you a mobile-friendly, search engine friendly e-Commerce website solution. Call us for a free quote on our services.