Ensuring your website ranks as high as it can in Google should be your number one goal with your website.
More and more people are using mobile devices to view the internet, this is a fact that everyone is getting used to. Mainly this advent has come about because of Apple making the ipad and iphones and then Android making their cheaper range of mobile devices.
However websites are made primarily with computer screens in mind, the standard LCD computer screen is quite different in size and orientation to most mobile screens. You would of noticed this when you attempt to read a website on your mobile device that is not responsive and are forced to pinch and scroll repeatedly to be able to read it. Not a good experience for anyone.
So people came up with full mobile versions of their website, the website would detect that a visitor is using a mobile device and display the mobile version of the website. The annoying thing about this is that there are now two versions of your website that you need to maintain, which adds additional work to the website updating process which is already a laborious task as it is.
Ethan Marcotte coined the term RWD (Responsive Web Design) in May 2010 which was the start of the responsive web design revolution. What RWD means is you make a single website that automatically changes depending on the screen size of the device that you are accessing the site with. This means the end user can easily read that text on a mobile device as text and images are automatically resized to fit the screen.
How to tell if my website is responsive?
You can tell if your website is responsive by changing the size of the browser window while on a website. If the website automatically adjusts itself to fit into a smaller window your website is probably responsive.
The other better way to check is to use Google Mobile Friendly test.
You can enter the url and it will tell you if the page is mobile friendly or not.
Why is having a responsive website important to you?
In 2014 mobile devices exceeded the number desktop devices worldwide. If you monitor these analytics on your website, you probably would of noticed that the amount of people coming to your website from mobile devices and tablets has increased over the last few years.
If your website is easy for them to access and navigate it means that they are more likely to stay on your site and potentially buy or call you. If your website is difficult to navigate they will probably just leave straight away. This is what is commonly known as a bounce.
How does a responsive website affect Google Rankings
Whether your website is mobile friendly or now is now being used by Google as part of their search algorithm, so making your website mobile friendly is one of the things you can do to ensure your website ranks better in Google.
Ranking better in Google means that you will get more visitors and consequently more, leads and potentially more customers.
What can you do about it
Getting someone to convert your website to a WordPress theme that is mobile friendly is quite a simple process. A good web designer will be able to do this for you in a few hours and the charge should be around $500 or so. This should get you a website that looks similar or the same as your current website while making it responsive.