What you need to know: Responsive Design = Web design that adjusts itself to fit screens both big and small As of April 21st 2015, if you don't have a mobile-friendly website, that needs to be at the top of your wish list for the immediate future. This is arguably one of the hardest-hitting algorithm updates Google has made in years aside from its emphasis on local SEO. Basically, what Google has done to the search results is put caution tape on websites that aren't mobile-friendly and put badges of honor on those that are. It's basically Google's way of saying, "If you're not maintaining your site and making it easy to use, we're not going to send people to your site anymore." The homebuilding industry tends to be several years behind in online trends; in rare cases, several decades. This is one area where it won't fly to continue in the cycle of what's been working for the last ten or even five years. Because with more than half of all homebuyers conducting their home searches from their cell phones, the bottom line is that non-responsive websites are going to die on the vine. No one is going to click on your site if there is a warning from Google saying it won't work on their phone, especially when your competitor's site is right there with a mobile-friendly label. Here's what a non-responsive website looks like to someone who's on a phone or tablet: Imagine you have a catalog in front of you for a product you're really interested in buying. Only when you go to look at a page, the entire page is blocked except for a tiny square, and you have to move that square around the page to view little bits of it at a time until you get an idea in your mind of what the whole thing must look like. How long would it take you to get frustrated and throw the catalog across the room? The good news is that upgrading to a responsive website opens you up to a ton of other new features that likely aren't able to be installed on an outdated website. Having a responsive design is also an upgrade from having a separate mobile site when it comes to your SEO. Instead of maintaining two different sites and dividing traffic between two different sites, you get all of the SEO juice feeding into one site, which will likely bump you up higher in search results. Want to do a quick test to see if your site has a responsive design? Go to www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly and type in your website link.