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Welcome to Two Minute Tuesdays. This is Jacki Kearslake from Dental Web Strategies and today
I'm going to talk about dental websites, and why you need a responsive design for your
dental practice website. What is a responsive design? To answer this question, we first
of all have to consider how people access the Internet in 2013. In many ways, it's the
age of mobile. Australians are very fond of their mobile devices, be it smart phones like
the iPhone, or tablets such as the iPad. Naturally, a mobile device has a much smaller screen
than a desktop computer. Most website designs have been developed for desktop sized computers.
[On An iPhone, A Normal Website] If they are displayed on the small screen of an iPhone
for example, the website displayed is just a tiny version of the desktop variety. This
generally means that the viewer has to pinch to expand the website in order to properly
read the text and to navigate the website on the tiny iPhone screen: without expanding
the site size, the links and buttons are far too tiny to press. Navigating an expanded
website is possible but can be frustrating, because the viewer needs to scroll horizontally
as well as vertically to read the entire page. Enter responsive website design. A responsive
design, as the name suggests, enlarges and shrinks according to the size of the screen
on which the website is displayed. A website that might cover three columns or four columns
of width on a desktop may shrink down to a single column for easy display on an iPhone.
Links and buttons remain thumb friendly, and the only direction that a viewer needs to
scroll is vertically. The text remains at a size that is easy to read on an iPhone,
and the entire website is easy to access and read. Google has recently indicated that it's
very fond of responsive designs for websites in 2013. When Google gives this kind of hint,
if's generally a good idea to take notice. How Do I Know Whether My Website Is Responsive
Or Not? Grab the nearest iPhone and pull up your website. If it's just a tiny version
of the desktop design, then your website is not of responsive design. If the website's
address starts with an m. or ends with a .mobi, then the website that displays on the iPhone
is a mobile website which runs in parallel to your desktop site. In essence, you have
two websites, not a responsive site. While this is better than not having a mobile-friendly
version of your website, a responsive design is actually a better model. Why Australian
Dentists Should Pay Attention You've probably already figured out the reasons why it's so
important to have your website displaying easily on a mobile device. Australians use
their mobiles frequently to search for Australian dentists. If your website makes it easy for
them to find out information about you and your practice, the viewer is far more likely
to press on the click to call button and to make an inquiry or appointment with you. If
you're not certain whether it your website is mobile friendly, or if you're ready to
change over to a responsive design, or even if you just want to know more about the benefits
of having a responsive website design then give us a call. We're here to help Australian
dentists become more visible online.