It’s probably no surprise by now that mobile internet usage has been skyrocketing over the last few years. According to a Morgan Stanley report, mobile internet usage is expected to surpass desktop usage by 2016. Even with this compelling evidence, the vast majority of business websites are still not mobile-friendly. This is not only causing a headache for users, but also a loss in business opportunity.

In this post, we explain why having a responsive website is so critical to your marketing as well as some key considerations to keep in mind when designing a responsive website.

What’s the difference between mobile and responsive design? There are two principal methods for creating mobile websites: responsive design and mobile templates. Responsive design requires you only have one website that is coded to adapt to all screen sizes, no matter what device on which the website is being displayed.

In contrast, a mobile template is an entirely separate entity, requiring you to have a second mobile-only website or subdomain. Mobile templates are also built for each particular site, not per screen size. This can cause some issues, as will be discussed later on.

Here Are Some Undeniable Reasons Your Website Must Be Responsive.

#6: Responsive adapts to future devices

One of the big benefits of responsive design is that the size of the template is designed based on screen size, not device. Meaning, that no matter what size screen someone is viewing your website, it has a high likelihood to display correctly for that screen size.

So, in the future, as new devices (TVs, watches, glasses, etc.) are being used for web browsing, your responsive site will still look beautiful. Moving forward, it will be extremely critical that your website provides mobile users an easy-to-use experience. Having a mobile website is no longer simply a nice feature — rather, it is now a necessity and impacts the growth of your business.

#5: A speedy, responsive website is critical

According to the Google PageSpeed Developers, standards recommend that the mobile device content above the fold loads in under 1 second, and the entire page loads in under 2 seconds. This is typically not possible when loading a desktop website on a mobile device. When a user has to wait too long for a page to load, there’s an extremely high chance they may leave your site.

Curious about how well your current website is performing on a mobile device? Check out Google's mobile website speed testing tool to check your site’s page load speed.

#4: Responsive design is preferred for SEO

In June 2012, at SMX Advanced, Google’s Pierre Farr went on record to declare that Google prefers responsive web design over mobile templates. Having one single URL makes it easier for Google bot to crawl your site as well as reduces the chance of on-page SEO errors. For these reasons, responsive sites typically perform better and are easier to maintain than a separate, mobile-template site.

Post originally appeared on Inbound Insiders.

(Read More… See the Top 3 Reasons Your Website Must Be Responsive)