What is a responsive website and why does it matter to Auctioneers?

What is a Responsive Web Design and How does it Impact the Auction Industry?

Imagine yourself trying to drink a glass of water out of a thimble. Sometimes you just need things to fit, and this is the concept behind responsive design: scalability.

If you’ve ever used your mobile device to pull up a website and that requires a magnifying glass to read, then you understand the need for a responsive web design.

 It basically means that your mobile device hasn’t been informed to re-size a webpage to make it more mobile friendly for you, and for your eyes.

Wiki calls it “an optimal viewing and interaction experience... with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones)”

For those of you with better eye-sight, you might be saying, “so whats the big deal?”

But for the rest of us, we know how frustrating it can be to “zoom-in” a thousand times in order to read a website that doesn’t fit our mobile screens.

The bottom line is, the popularity and demand of smart phones has created a whole new industry for software developers, app designers, and web programmers…but as with any shift in technology, these new trends come with a whole new set of challenges as well.

The non-responsive web designs (mini-sites) have proven to be most problematic for e-commerce sites, or those that require several fields of information, such as trying to book a flight or a hotel.

Most individuals have a hard time with tiny little screens and multiple drop-down boxes and calendar dates to click-on—you may have heard a neighbor yelling at their cell phone, “No that’s not what I selected!”

After hearing complaints from users and consumers alike, big companies solved the problem by building multiple sites:

• For normal computer screens
• For smart phones & mobile devices
• Then tablets came along
• And then apps came along
• ….and now there’s watches people, watches!

Both web developers and businesses were asking themselves the same question;

“How many times do we need to re-build the website?”

The solution was responsive web-design. Instead of creating multiple sites that fit each device, why not develop one site that fits multiple devices. 

In April of 2015, Google announced that all non-responsive websites would be knocked down in search rankings due to lack of “mobile friendliness.”  This sent businesses scrambling to re-design their websites and update their mobile presence so as not to loose their rankings.

How does responsive web design affect the auction industry?

In all honesty, for some Auctioneers, it doesn’t. But if you want to rank high in Google search results, or if you’re conducting online auctions of any kind, you will undoubtedly benefit from converting to a responsive web site.

Consumers these days find credibility in the look and feel of your site. With more people relying on their phones to steer purchase decisions, an outdated site could hurt more than just your search rankings.

The next generation of buyers are becoming accustomed to expect a responsive web design, and won’t spend much time trying to navigate an outdated site that doesn’t look as pretty on their phones as it might on their computers at home.

Lets face it, Millenials like to buy online and they want that process to be easy and seamless. We’ve moved into an age that is heavily dependent on advancing technology, and no business wants to miss the boat.

A responsive web design may be just the beginning for the growing auction industry, keep a look out for mobile bidding apps, virtual auctions, and who knows what else…but whatever it is, we’ll be there with a gavel in hand!

-Gavel Guru