We’ve been banging the responsive website drum for some time now. We relaunched our website last summer with a responsive design built on top of HubSpot’s powerful COS. And we’ve been launching responsive websites for our clients on both HubSpot and WordPress since.

Do you need a responsive website?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Hell yes.

Not sure what a responsive website is? Where have you been?
I am still shocked (and a little pissed off) when I go to a website on my iPhone and it’s not responsive. It’s even worse when it’s a “mobile optimized” site.

I know, I know, websites are expensive and you have a million things going on.

But think of it this way; your website is your show room.

Let’s say you have a brick and mortar location. What would happen if potential customers walked into your business and had to step over garbage, dodge exposed wires hanging from the ceiling, and avoid that creepy, overly touchy guy from accounting? What would keep those potential customers from running for their lives?

It still shocks me when I see a big company without a responsive site, and they don’t get much bigger than Apple.

That’s right, Apple’s website is not responsive, and it looks like crap on their own devices. It scales down nicely, but just try reading that text on your phone or clicking on the right menu item with those fat fingers. Whoops, speaking to myself now.

ESPN and retailers like Sears, JCPenney, and Walmart have mobile versions of their sites, which did the job a few years ago, but that doesn’t cut it any more.

Mobile versions of websites are bad for a few reasons:

Your website is quite possibly the first, or even the only thing a customer may see of you and your business. You need to make sure that they can easily navigate and consume all that remarkable content you create.

So let’s say you decide to forego a responsive website and think you have everything you need with both a desktop and “mobile optimized” website. Here’s where you can run into some trouble:

1. You have two websites to make content updates on.

If you have a mobile site and a desktop site that means double the work. I don’t know about you, but I have enough to do in a day where I don’t wan’t to be running around updating the same content on two different sites.

2. It’s bad for SEO.

Google doesn’t like duplicate content, and having the same content spread across two domains is a big boo-boo. Plus, have you ever clicked on a mobile URL on your desktop? It’s a crummy experience there, too.

3. It’s a crappy experience for your visitors.

I don’t think I need to explain this one, but perhaps the WTF Mobile Web blog can illustrate this one. You need to get on the responsive website bandwagon because your competitors are. Guess where your customers are going when they can’t properly navigate your website on their devices?

A responsive site will solve all three of those issues.

It’s halfway through 2014, it’s time to make the move to a responsive website. It’s the responsive-able thing to do. Get it? Get it? The responsive-able thing to do.

This article originally appeared on LyntonWeb.