Conversion Optimization for Responsive Web Design

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We’ve had lots of interest and inquiries about Responsive Web Design since our recent blog post. In it, we showed how Google recommends Responsive Web Design and is evolving their SERPs to use RWD.

With mobile usage skyrocketing and confusion abounding about how to handle T-commerce and various screen sizes, the high level of interest is justified.

Options for Mobile Conversion Optimization

You may be wondering how RWD fits into the mobile website discussion. There are generally four options for serving your mobile website visitors:

• Using your standard site for mobile visitors
  This is a perfectly fine approach to take if your mobile traffic percentage is low. On most smartphones, the visitor can zoom in to read content and engage with your site. Small traffic numbers may not justify an investment for building anything else.At WiderFunnel, this is what we’ve done for our own site while our mobile traffic was in the low single digits. Now that it’s hitting double-digits, we’re building out a strategy for mobile.


• Develop a mobile app
  A mobile app is a good strategy if you have a unique social or interactive platform or if your site is your product. Facebook, Twitter and WordPress are good examples where the app approach makes sense. But, if you have an ecommerce or B2B lead generation goal then this approach might not be for you. Most people won’t want to download an app just to visit your website and conversion optimization testing within a mobile app is not easily done.


• Build a separate mobile site
  This is what a lot of companies have done and it is a viable alternative. The downside, however, is that you’ll have to maintain two (or more) independent websites.You’ll also need to double-up on testing for each site independently.


• Building a responsive website
  When you build your site in RWD you don’t need to continually rebuild it for new screen sizes or devices. It’s literally a “one-size fits all” solution.Rather than having multiple pages and subdomains with the same content (like m.domain.com), with RWD each page has one URL. This means that your social interactions are aggregated rather than being split across multiple pages, and you only have to manage one page.

As I said in my previous blog post, Google has stated their preference for Responsive Web Design, which means there could benefits to your SEO efforts moving forward.

Does RWD Optimize Conversions?

There’s a good case to be made for how RWD saves cost versus building mobile sites or apps. It’s a future-proof solution that works for whatever browser sizes may emerge.

The more important question, however, is whether RWD maximizes conversions and revenue for all those screen sizes. Fortunately, there’s a good case to be made that it does – if the responsive site is designed properly.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that the best way to maximize conversions and revenue is through controlled conversion optimization testing. Continuous testing is how the best-performing companies maintain their leadership.

Good news: Conversion Optimization works for Responsive Web Design!

WiderFunnel is currently optimizing RWD websites for clients and generating interesting results. Our user-oriented perspective for generating test hypotheses works for all types of experiences, and RWD is no exception. We are working with our RWD clients to optimize the various conversion goals needed for mobile and desktop experiences.

How does it work?

Conversion testing for RWD works much like on any other site. Visitors to your website who arrive at your test page are randomly selected to be shown one of several ‘challenger’ variations of the page. (Read more about A/B/n testing and Multivariate testing here.)

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The difference with testing on a RWD site is that your variation pages also need to scale elegantly throughout the range of possible screen sizes. This can add to the work involved in preparing the test but it can be avoided too.

The alternative is to select your most popular screen size to test with to find better performing content. Once you’ve determined a winning page, you can design the rest of the RWD screen sizes.

Make sure that you also run a follow-up A/B test with the fully responsive variation to make sure performance across screen sizes is consistent.

You may find that different devices and screen sizes respond to your content in different ways. With RWD, you can prioritize content and calls-to-action differently based on the browser dimensions, then customize those experiences for varying visitor scenarios.

RWD is a great option for mobile and tablet sites and gives a single solution for all screen sizes. It’s an exciting area to be testing in, and as we move ahead with more tests that incorporate RWD, I’ll be sure to share more insights with you.

So stay tuned!

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