As you know, the vast majority of the population is using the mobile devices and Smartphones to surf internet and access their favorite websites. According to the reports, 62 % of the traffic on websites is coming from mobile devices.
Thus, it is important for each and every website owner to design a mobile-friendly sites that can run on both the desktop and on the multiple mobile devices.
So, if you only have a desktop theme, then you can either choose a Mobile theme or the responsive theme to make your site compatible and scalable for mobile devices.
Well, you don’t to worry because we are going to make a comparison between the Mobile and Responsive theme that will help you choose the most suitable one that can fulfill your business needs.
Let’s start the comparison:
1. Cost
If your site theme is a desktop only on the open cart platform, then you have certain options:
- You can hire a web developer who can develop a responsive theme for your site. However, cost of the development process depends on your website.
- Can also hire a developer to develop a custom mobile site. The cost of designing a custom mobile theme is relatively less as compared to the responsive theme. But still it will depend on your website.
- You can buy a responsive theme that cost around $15 – $90.
- Buy a mobile-friendly theme that cost around $25 – $80.
Outcome: The cost of Custom responsive theme is as same as the cost of custom mobile theme.
2. Speed
Experienced and professional web developers find that a responsive website is slow as compared to mobile-friendly websites.
Working Procedure of Responsive design
A responsive website is one site or theme that optimizes itself as per the screen size of the device that’s loading it. However, the similar content is displayed on all devices and this is why responsive sites are slower in speed. The problem is diploid:
- Most of desktop websites load many files on one hand.
- Mobile devices find problem in loading too many. Thus, mobile phones use a slower and poor network connection.
What do mobile-friendly websites do differently?
Mobile-optimized websites utilize different set of files than a desktop site. It enables the mobile sites to load only specific visual aspects of the desktop site. However, the option that what should be loaded by the mobile theme develops on the server and the mobile phone that is loading the site never slow down, as the theme loads less files.
From this fact, you can find out that many of the mobile visitors leaving your site just because your site takes in loading and you will frequently lose your potential customers.
Outcome: Speed of a website can affect your conversion rates and it is concluded that responsive websites are slower than the mobile-optimized websites.
3. SEO-Friendly
It is imperative for you to have a SEO-friendly website as it can hold your position in the competitive online market. It is really essential to have SEO friendly URLs. The rest will depend on your keyword research and professional skills. SO, let’s compare both the themes: responsive and mobile depending on the way that how they handle SEO URLs.
Responsive website = One Set of URLs
One set of URLs is a great SEO benefit. It means that all backlinks, on all mobile point to your main domain.
A mobile site=different set of URLs
Not always.
However, there are two concepts that can help in creating mobile website:
Dynamic Serving: It means that a mobile theme is loaded, when a mobile phone access the site. A desktop theme is loaded when a desktop computer access the website. In this way, a mobile visitor sees one page and a desktop visitor view another page. Both pages are on the similar URL. That means you can both have a separate mobile-friendly theme and other are assured that your URLs are SEP-optimized.
Different URLs: It means that mobile websites utilizes a different URL than the desktop website. The mobile websites will be at m.yourstore.com site or ayourstore.com/m/ site. It is not really SEO friendly.
Outcome: So a mobile websites are SEO friendly if it uses dynamic serving (different themes on the same URL), while, responsive themes are SEO friendly.
Conclusion
In this blog, we compared both the Responsive and Mobile sites on the three major aspects: Cost, Speed and SEO Friendly. The cost of responsive theme and mobile theme are the same. However, the responsive theme is slower than the mobile themes. Both themes are SEO-friendly. So, it is up to you what you will choose, Mobile theme or Responsive theme?
