Google Launches New Responsive Design Checker

The Internet demands that you make your website easy to access for people browsing from a toilet seat. And that's the blunt truth that you need to deal with, if you haven't done so already.

In fact, Google states that nearly 60% of all Google searches start on a mobile device, with many then moving to desktop devices to expand their research. Plus, if your website isn't mobile friendly, Google will penalize you by lowering your SEO ranking.

But perhaps even more importantly, without mobile-friendly design, your visitors will begin to leave you – because they absolutely demand content that they can access while using a mobile device. Anything less than that is almost repulsive in the eyes of today's digitally-savvy society.

Thus, responsive design is vital to the survival and expansion of your brand.

Google's New Responsive Design Checker

To help check how friendly your website is with mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, Google has just launched a new tool.

As you can see, CMS Critic is a friend to all screen sizes:

Via their new tool, Google analyses any website you ask it to, and then returns a short report.

Firstly, and most importantly, it will point out if the website is mobile-friendly or not.

It will also alert you to any individual elements of your website which aren't responsive. These may or may not be important, or indeed, you may have deliberately disabled some elements for mobile devices in order to enhance the user experience. But in either case, it's good to know what areas of your website mobile devices are (and aren't) seeing.

Most modern content management systems are churning out responsive themes and templates these days, but with the stakes so high, we strongly recommend checking your websites for yourself.

For more information, check out Google's official announcement.