Determining the Impact of Responsive Design

As Responsive Design has matured to a position of dominance in the web design and development world, so have our heads been filled with anecdotal evidence (i.e., non-evidence) about the ROI of Responsive Web Design. (Just for fun, I propose call this ROIRWD and, furthermore, that we agree henceforth to pronounce it “roy-ward”.)

Now, of course the lack of empirical evidence for a thing’s existence doesn’t mean the thing doesn’t exist, and anecdotal data isn’t without its value. But it sure is helpful, when articulating the business case for a new and often more expensive approach, to have some proof that said approach is worth the cost. So I was delighted when, on Monday, developer luminary, respected author, and Polar co-founder Luke Wroblewski posted the tiny grenade below to his blog. It’s a tiny data set, but it contains some astonishing numbers. (Skinny Ties: 377.6% revenue growth on iPhone? Like a boss, as my kids say.) So I’m reposting the data from that post here, along with his plea, verbatim.

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Time Inc. Responsive Redesign
Pages per visit, across mobile, tablet and desktop are up considerably. (source)
Mobile is up 23% compared to what it had been. (source)
Homepage uniques are up 15%, and time spent is up 7.5%. (source)
The mobile bounce rate decreased by 26%. (source)

O’Neill Clothing Responsive Redesign
65.7% conversion rate increase on iPhone/iPod (source)
101.2% revenue growth on iPhone/iPod (source)
407.3% conversion rate increase on Android devices (source)
591.4% revenue growth on Android devices (source)
20.3% conversion rate increase on non-mobile devices (source)
41.1% revenue growth on non-mobile devices (source)

Skinny Ties Responsive Redesign
42% revenue growth on all devices (source)
13.6% conversion rate increase (source)
377.6% revenue growth on iPhone (source)
71.9% conversion rate increase on iPhone (source)
44.6% increase in duration (source)
23.3% lower bounce rate (source)

Regent College Responsive Redesign
99% increase in unique visitors (source)
77% increase pageviews (source)
63% increase in online applications (source)

Wait… that’s only four sources of data? Sadly, I don’t have other public numbers right now as most organizations don’t share their data. If you’ve had success with a responsive design, my plea to you is to please share what you’ve learned. The more we can learn from each other, the better we can all get.

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Luke’s blog is surely more widely read than ours, and strictly speaking, he probably doesn’t need this particular signal-boost. But his plea should be echoed by as many of us as possible, for other data such as his are surely out there and one of the best things we can do for our clients and our craft is to share as liberally as we can.

Do you have data you can share that illuminates the ROIRWD question? If so, please let us, and the world, know.