Allow me to start with a quick summary of this article:
There's a 270% gap in conversions between desktop and mobile, because mobile websites suck and we’re all doing it wrong. (Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ll explain why and what needs to be done to fix this.)
At its essence, responsive design is supposed to make a cross-device world a more seamless experience by adapting your desktop design to a smaller mobile screen. Unfortunately, condensing all that desktop content into such a small screen has the exact opposite effect — it's actually causing huge loss in conversion rates. But how?
Responsive design clutters mobile sites with irrelevant content for on-the-go visitors. Built with a desktop user in mind, a mobile visitor who has different intentions and a different state of mind may not find what they’re looking for, and leave your site feeling frustrated and confused. This is the source of your huge loss in conversions.
This isn’t to say you should abandon responsive design altogether. Rather, you must think more specifically about the mobile web experience and the mobile visitor’s state of mind instead of simply transferring the desktop design to a mobile one.
To develop a useful responsive mobile experience we must do two things:
- Most importantly, consider why a mobile customer has come to your site;
- And understand their intent.
(Here are 5 metrics you should follow to understand your mobile visitors better.)
These two parameters will help determine what you need to highlight, remove, or optimize on your mobile site and give greater clarity to what your responsive design should include. Below are the 5 basic elements you should consider when designing your mobile experience:
5 Steps for Optimizing Your Responsive Site
1. Optimize image scaling and consider value
Most images scale down with responsive design. However, an image that looks nice on a desktop can suddenly become a dominant and distracting part of a mobile site. Although images are scalable, depending on their value, they might not be necessary to mobile design. Consider the way an image appears within your responsive design. Is it an effective use of visuals? If the image is taking up the entire screen on a phone, or simply serves as nice centerpiece to the site, it’s time to rethink how that image is used device-to-device. For example, Simpsons Solutions’ desktop image doesn’t scale well and overtakes the mobile screen, cluttering the design and making it hard to comprehend what’s going on on that page.
Images (both logo and main image) that work well on desktop completely overtake the mobile screen, have almost no value on a phone, and make it difficult to understand the product.
Outdoor retailer REI’s website, on the other hand, uses the same photo as a focal point on both mobile and desktop, but it scales to the appropriate needs of the visitor.
2. Simplify navigation
Perhaps one of the most important features a mobile site can include is a clear and functional navigation bar. Having a visible, easily accessible menu or search bar helps mobile visitors get where they're going quickly. Most mobile visitors are coming to a mobile site with a single objective in mind; they'll waste no time in finding the menu bar, searching for a keyword, and clicking to the page they need.
Analyzing what your mobile customers are doing on your site and searching for is integral for understanding how to tailor your mobile site to those needs. You may discover most mobile visitors use the search bar rather than click on your main call-to-action button; as a result, you might redesign your mobile site to feature the search bar more prominently, helping mobile visitors achieve their goals more quickly. In addition, understanding what people are actually searching for on the site will give you an indication to what’s missing, what isn’t clear, and what needs optimizing.
Because they're on the go, mobile visitors are often in need of a contact page, usually looking for an address or a phone number to easily reach your company. Brick-and-mortar businesses should be especially cognizant of this, ensuring they have an easy-to-find contact page directly via the site navigation or on the homepage itself. Customers are much more likely to complete an order, visit your physical shop, and leave satisfied with the experience if finding you is simple and straightforward.
3. Kill responsive pop ups, use mobile overlays
Overlays and pop ups built for desktop experiences on mobile tend to distract from a mobile visitor’s primary purpose for landing on your site. Instead, guide them and focus them on a singular goal — their goal. Using a desktop solution for a mobile experience kills conversions. Since desktop overlays/pop-ups aren’t designed to fit the 19,000 combinations of screen size and resolutions found on mobile devices today, it’s wise not to use them on mobile. You don’t want an overlay fit to the resolution and specs of a desktop — these won’t scale down, making mobile navigation unbearable.
A bad overlay, like the examples below, completely take over the mobile screen, prevent you from seeing any other content, are hard to click out of, and do not fit the mobile screen (see how the email field is cut on the LastKings example).
Instead, studying how a mobile visitor behaves on your site can help you determine what your overlay should ask for, lead to, or even just what information should be included. Take into consideration both the mobile technical necessities and the customer's mobile behavior to design an overlay to the exact needs of your mobile visitors.
4. Less is more: simplify, shorten and optimize your text
While it might seem obvious, text is often one feature that very few brands take the time to develop for effective desktop (let alone mobile) sites. To avoid overcrowding and confusion, it's always better to keep text brief and to the point in terms of how many words appear on a site. This is where information hierarchy comes heavily into play. Your company can rearrange, rewrite, and reformat any headlines and taglines to feature only the most important information for a mobile visitor. This practice also ensures that the text isn’t taking over a page with long and wordy visuals.
While all this text seems to work well on desktop, mobile is a completely different story. The text completely hides the page, is impossible to read, and all conversion elements (such as trust symbols and call-to-action buttons) have been pushed below the fold. This is yet another case of failed responsive design:
Another factor to consider is the automatic nature of scrolling on a mobile device. A desktop can capture a full message, words, and pictures in a single glance. While less people scroll when on a desktop, on mobile, visitors instantly begin scrolling hoping for something to catch their eye. This should influence how you write a headline based on where and how it scrolls. Text should be short and concise so it catches the eye and is valuable to the reader.
5. Reconsider and clarify your calls-to-action
A mobile site should have one clear goal that the call-to-action button should support. The call-to-action button should be the first element a mobile visitor pays attention to and it should instantly tell the visitor what to do. For example, Udemy, an online learning platform, puts a very clear call-to-action at the top of their mobile landing page that aligns with the company’s overall goal. They know their customers have come to their site to learn, so to help them accomplish this goal instantly, they provided a button for finding courses and a search bar for enhanced navigation.
Create seamless design today
While the goal is to create a seamless experience across all channels for your customers, in order to increase conversions and create a better experience on mobile or any other device, companies must get to know their customers better, understanding their behavior and state of mind before choosing to implement the simple, common solution that may kill their conversions and experience. Remember to always have your mobile customers’ specific behavior and needs in mind before designing your next landing page or site.
What mobile design tactics have worked for you? Let us know in the comments below.
Hey guys!
Thanks for taking the time to read this article, hope you found it helpful.
I will be talking a lot more about mobile optimization at my MozCon session in just a few weeks and am hoping to make it super actionable for you guys. So to do that, I'd love to hear from you:
Thanks for the article. It explais a lot of things I had in mind.
What do you think about using a "hamburger" menu as a storage for categories on an e-commerce website?
As a general rule you need to help your mobile visitors find what they're looking for in the fastest and most convenient way possible. The most important links/pages/content should be prominent on the page and items that assist people in navigation (finding what they need on your site) should be in the menu (e.g: ways to contact you, about you etc.). I would spend some time digging into the numbers in analytics to identify your top pages, landing pages and exit pages - these will give you a better indication as to what people are looking for on mobile and what should be in your menu or on the main pages.
As always, Talia gives amazing insights.
Thank you!
I think your headline and some of the points you've raised are a little misleading, or off the mark.
The examples you gave of are of bad design, not simply responsive design. Bad design whether on mobile, desktop or whatever, won't bring conversion.
I doubt any of the negative examples you referred to were signed-off by someone saying "great, looks good", or implemented after testing how they affect conversion.
I couldn't agree more.
Responsive web design is not just about changing 1024px to 100%. It's about moving/hiding/displaying the elements in a way that your end result looks like it was built for that particular media. And THAT is what good responsive design does.
I agree. #1, #3, and #4 seem to be examples where someone tried to use responsive design, but didn't really understand how to. The client likely has no idea how bad those pages look at specific resolutions. It wouldn't surprise me if all 3 of them were the byproduct of cheap Wordpress themes.
While design is an extremely important aspect of optimization, it's not just the design that matters. Definitely, these websites can do a LOT more to optimize their responsive design and make it "look" better. However, though responsive design (done well) is much better than having to pinch and zoom on a website, treating mobile visitors as if they're mini-desktop ones who require the exact content as on desktop is a mistake and no matter have nice it looks on mobile it doesn't address the specific needs of mobile visitors.
Once marketers get to know their mobile visitors better and identify the different behavioral needs and emotional state of mind they will be able to not just create a "good looking" responsive site - but one that actually converts and helps mobile visitors find what they want.
I can't speak for other agencies, but the way that we operate is that content on desktop and mobile should be the same 99% of the time, and that if you don't need the content on mobile, you don't need it on desktop either.
The reasoning behind that is that websites – no matter how "advanced" they get with their design – still can't determine what context their users are using them in. Studies show that just as many users are on their mobile devices on their couch (or sitting at their desk in front of their computer!) as users that are on the move somewhere. As a consultant that works from home, I can say that I'm often browsing the web on an iphone or ipad, within 20 feet of a fully capable macbook. I only go to the macbook if I need to type a lot (like now). My needs as a website visitor are the same on all of those devices. They don't change just because my available screen real estate has changed.
You're right- we should not "treat mobile visitors as if they're mini-desktop" users. What we should do, is treat desktop users as if they're mobile ones. Cut the cruft. Show them only what they need. Lose design elements that distract them from their tasks or reading. Make pages load as fast as technically possible. All of that should be a part of base-level responsive web design, and it is, for any web designer I personally know.
This was one of biggest issues with responsive design.
Most of people think that if they have responsive design they can answer needs to all mobile users. But isn't! Because responsive can break design on lowest resolutions. Also "responsive" website can load 2-3-4Mb images to device with 320x240 screens. Some of them load Full HD video, least 1MB JS code or even 400-500k CSS code too. This is OK if you test responsive design in office or customer office where conditions are perfect - WiFi coverage and few devices, most flagship devices.
But in real world responsive design fail spectacular because conditions wasn't perfect - 2G/3G, network lag, small screen devices, slow devices (some still have single core CPU!), small ram (256-512MB). And most comes with outdated devices - Android 2.X, 4.X, iOS 6-7, WindowsPhone 8, etc.
What's why "big boys" (Amazon, eBay, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and/or others) know that only responsive design isn't enough for true mobile users. I can be example of one of those users. I don't have Facebook/Twitter on mine mobile phone. It's annoying with all those notifications but also battery drain, no thanks. I access them on Safari with mobile versions. But Facebook is one step closer with their Zero version - 0.facebook.com. Because this is "text only" version of their site. If you're veteran in bulletin boards or hard core *nix fan you will fail in love with this.
That's why "big boys" create special mobile version with focus of mobile users. Some of them even have few mobile versions dependent of browser user agents. And Walmart saw same here. After redesign they saw 98% increase of mobile sales.
Of course we talk for companies with deep pockets. For SMB responsive design is enough just need to be tested well on different devices and network coverage to see how site is performed there. Don't worry! Probably can't find silver bullet with first edition of website but there are few helpers there. One of those answers can be AMP, Instant Articles or even Apple News.
Best things come to those who don't give up!
Hi Talia,
Nice article, however, I feel it could have been more detailed to cover more aspects that kill conversions on mobile.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Vijay
So true - the non-responsive pop ups in a mobile environment are worse than mosquitoes ;o)
thankfully, Google seems to have an update coming in January 2017 that will demote sites that use pop-ups and interstitials in mobile (aside from discrete ones, cookie ones and age restriction ones). Really looking forward to it!
Completely agree. Since Google will continue to rank a page highly if they see the interstitials is relevant and what customers are looking for, it will make sure that mobile visitors find what they're looking for and get a better experience.
I'm totally agree with this article, a lot of websites are just responsive but not mobile optimised, and ironically they receive more traffic from mobile that desktop.
Thanks Talia
a very interesting topic indeed and one of high concern.
- Biggest conversion challenge on mobile: too big gap compared to desktop
- Experience: responsive design and I believe we have followed most of the points you raise and invested time and money on it
- Question. Since our results are not very attractive on mobile conversion and we think we have done a lot to improve this I personally like to put part of the blame to the product and shopping moment combination.
I explain myself. I think consumers (us) are in general far less prepared to make a buying decision while on the bus, or train, or underground or whilst drinking a coffee with a mobile than in a desktop situation. Maybe the consumer feels safer. I like to believe a big part of the gpa is due to this.
Then the product also plays a role (again, I want to believe) If you sell highly impulsive products or services then you have to get it now... and your site converts. If your product is more complex, the consumers needs to think about it, and share it with a friend, couple, etc since the decision impacts more than one person then conversion on mobile suffers (I want to believe!)
NOW TO THE QUESTION
To what extent would you consider that what I indicate can be real issues to prevent higher conversion... or nice excuses since results are not as nice as we´d like them to be?
Thanks a lot
You are right in saying that there are different stages in the buying process and all need to be addressed.
It is important to understand what stage your potential customer is at in the buying process and deliver the content they need to complete the purchase.
Not everyone will purchase on mobile due to state of mind, multitasking any many other issues, this is why you have to create a seamless experience on mobile to help those people continue their shopping experience on desktop. I will be discussing this extensively at MozCon - how to identify the different stages your customers goes through and address them in the right way.
My main suggestions is to get to to know your mobile customers better, understand their habits and emotional triggers in order to create a better experience for them.
Thanks for the answer
We´ll run some analysis with analytics and I think we´ll also get to use interviews to see how people react to the website and what may prevent conversion for those in the mood to convert eventually!
This is really great stuff, I love the udemy idea for a clear CTA at the top of the page for mobile, do you know how much flexibility Wordpress has for making stuff like the CTA appear different on desktop than it does on mobile?
Most Wordpress themes will require technical setups/coding etc.
A good way to avoid this is have a dedicated tool just for desktop and one for mobile. That's what most our customers do. They use Banana Splash to time their splashes on mobile and make sure they adapt to all 19,000 different screen resolutions and turn off their desktop solution for mobile.
designing for self interest is common now a days. Just because it looks good it will also look good or even great to others.
A lot of factor needs to be considered and being minimalist yet attractive are just some of the most followed and used design now a days.
professional(presentable+business related)
+
conversion design
+
user experience(has got to do with users feelings)
= design should be the new design practices
Good catch towards UI & UX. Although i will go with main focus upon the point 2- Simplify navigation & point 4 - Optimize your text
Talia Wolf, I really appreciate your article and it is definitely an eyeopener for many website designers. In order to make it responsive they delve with the most complex UIs that spoils the entire user experience finally leading to the situation of generating less or no leads. This article highlights the do's and dont's to keep the mobile-friendly website user-friendly too. Thanks for sharing.
Agreed. Pushing responsive design was a big selling point for me over the past few years. I would preach the importance, but at times failed to do more than make the site responsive. Now I have a simple acronym for this project - RRC | Rearrange - Refocus - Convert.
I make sure contact info is front and center every-time - in a way that I only take up 5% of the mobile screen. Then I give that call to action a "movie premier showcase". Then I offer a way to interact via social. I give a visitor three things, then the option to view more.
So far so good. Awesome work Tali - I love your stuff!!
Thanks Michael. This is probably the most important thing to remember - responsive design can be great and truly improve your conversions when it isn't done "automatically" - rearranging content, optimizing and continuously analyzing mobile behavior will help keep your responsive site converting and friction free.
Very well written piece. Hard to convey this to clients when trying to steer them on what will work best, but perhaps this article will help.
Really helpful for me. I am trynig to fix the categories in my site and figure out which way is most helpful to show them to my visitors in mobile mode. I am sure this article will help me a lot. :)
Hello Talia Wolf! Good article, thanks, after reading I immediately started to check how my website looks on various mobile devices, my design everything is fine, but how to display my new website on mobile, I don't know - he's in development. At least now I'll have to work more on website design. Thank you and look forward to new articles
An issue I have bout a mobile-friendly site is how to transform an embedded YouTube video into a responsive one. My site is good on mobile except for the pages that have videos. Because they're from YouTube, the scaling is fixed and I couldn't do anything with them.
Got any idea, anyone?
This article is awesome, by the way. Thanks
.
There is always a fix James ;), look into using FitVids.js. By using this the videos will adopt to the screen size and also to the element you've embedded the videos within. Out of the box it also supports more then YouTube.
Thanks a lot man!
Will try it and tell you if it did the job for me. Well, I know it'll work. It's from you. lol
You just need to wrap the youtube video in a special container div ;) https://avexdesigns.com/responsive-youtube-embed/
i agree with that, i have to say my blogs i usually put them with responsive themes, the problem? well, visually they are worse than the ones that are not responsive making that the conversion is not the good i would like.
Doesnt matter how much visits a business website has, if no conversion, no money..
Another error i see in most of the mobiles responsive themes is the part of the menu, in many cases people dont understand how to navigate in the web causing them to leave.
The good thing is that the programmers who sell themes they are making efforts to create responsive themes but also visually good.
Thats the key in my opinion
First of all, good points and I do agree with most of the points you put forward here. However there is one thing I cant completely stand by.
I do agree that mobile users are probably more likely to be on the go and interested in concise, to the point information, but it is not everyone and if you loose a lot of the text on the mobile version of your site this wont always be an advantage.
Great article which deals with some of the fundamental problems.
There are so many issues around converting on a mobile device that no matter the amount of technology you through at it, some of the real world problems that affect conversions won't be sorted out. Unless evolution helps out with smaller finger tips and perfect eye sight :)
I like your suggestion of making the address easily viewable for brick and mortar businesses. I'd probably skip the popup altogether when on mobile unless your business is only virtual, like an e-commerce store, in which case I would probably push the email opt-in big time. As someone else pointed out usually people on mobile aren't in the right setting to purchase straight away, being able to capture their email and send them a quick reminder about your site later in the day could work well. Also once you have their email you can remarket to them when they are on desktop.
Hi Talia!!
The truth is that the subject of responsive design is a topic mejojar, at least here in Spain.
In fact, I have never ever bought anything from a device other than my computer. The most we have achieved is that interests me the product seen from the mobile but when buying do it from home
The consumer for years looking for information about everything you want to buy and obviously the phone is the best tool ... So I think that should make more efforts and start thinking like consumers if mobile or app version of my web is fully functional for my clients
Congrats for the post!!
I can see a lot responsive sites made because Google said so. Not a lot of people thought about it from a user perspective. Hamburger-Menus longer than the content. Scroll, scroll, scroll on phone... Headlines so big and Text so small. Sliders and sized images in Fullscreen.
Not a lot of these pages have been tested under real conditions. The Designers sized the browser or clicked on a mobile-plugin.
Designers please: take your Smartphone turn off WLAN and test that way. It takes more time? Think about it twice...
There are a few examples of great responsive Designs. I hope :-)
Hi Talia,
Thanks for spending your precious time to write this article for us this really very helpful, Actually we have already with some of the points you said but we didn't knew about call to action and Text shorten and optimize.
Great article Talia (as usual)! As one of the examples of good design in the blog post came from The Next Web I obviously would like to share some more insights into why we set up this splash. This specific screenshot was taken on the homepage but during the period that we tested this we ran this all across The Next Web for our mobile users. The screenshot that is posted was 1 out of around 8 variants in the end that we tested. And this was at least the winner in one of the earlier tests. In this case it meant that the 'splash' wasn't on-brand and was containing a message (what you won't immediately say for a tech news site) that was quite on brand and promoting our ecommerce store. These kind of splashes produce click through rates (CTR%) that I've never seen before.
The only downside for now is though that the actual influence will probably decrease over time when people might get annoyed by it. But as this is a case of keeping on testing it will be proved eventually when this tactic/strategy won't work anymore. But overall would I really recommend to at least give this a try (with or without BananaSplash)!
Good luck at Mozcon Talia! Too bad I can't join.
Useful Post ! We should talk about page speed on mobile devices as well, Peter Nikolow ( wish i could mention you easily, hopefully moz will add that feature soon ) excellent insights ! this post is somewhat related, you guys might find it useful https://marketingland.com/7-tips-generate-leads-mobile-devices-187892
in our case, no mobile purchase in our online store, we have assumed, but can be a good method to browse and then buy through the desktop
Thanks Talia for sharing such an interesting facts about responsive designs. I think you have mentioned correct information in your informative blog. Keep Sharing Like this, really appreciated.
Great article. I've always found that this is a problem as I use pre-made themes such as Avada for sites. Do you know of any that are flawless (If its possible) with their responsive code?
Good post and points very well made. One thing that is often forgotten and is so in this post is the changing landscape of mobile users. It's still ubiquitous that marketers assume mobile users are actually mobile, or 'on the move'. Mobile search is growing rapidly not only because more people are accessing the internet on the go, but because mobiles are replacing desktops even in the traditional desktop environment.
For example, when watching TV if consumers get inspired by an advert we tend not to wait 5 minutes while the Macbook Pro boots up and instead just jump on our mobile phones/tablets. Mobiles provide an instant cure for impromptu inspiration. This doesn't disagree with anything in the article, but it may impact your 'refining the content' process. Generally I agree shortening for mobiles is better but you have to pay attention to what marketing you're doing and what time of day you're hitting your audience as the number of actually 'mobile' visitors will vary greatly.
Mobile browsers sat at home on the sofa are still likely to spend time consuming all the information they can. The point about navigation remains very true however this shouldn't be limited to only mobile users. In a time starved world, UX is everything - or rather, UX and mobile are everything. I urge my clients (when data supports this) to focus on mobile first and then adapt for desktop as opposed to the other way round.
There are actually a lot more issues that make up a good responsive design, and have to do more about the layout of the page:
1. The size of the heading
2. The order of image / text sometimes gets scrambled because or the image changing from left to right position
3. The alignment of elements, that stay aligned to left/right on mobile instead of center where they should be
4. Padding and margin that should be there on mobile
5. Columns that get separated to different rows on mobile even though they should be together on the same row
We actually fixed all these issues on our free plugin for WordPress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rErfXXbsPI
It is evident the great boom that smartphones are getting, they already surpass in searches the destocks, with which no project can leave aside the mobile version, responsive design is now more important than ever and also the search engines give preference in their results to Those who have design responsive to those who do not. So possibly in the very near future is more important the mobile version to the desktop, I dare say that it already is
This makes me rethink my approach to building for mobile. I'm pretty good at designing for responsiveness, but I've been missing the "intent" part of mobile use. Great info - thanks!
Thank you, i love this idea, i think mobile chat on responsive is important for seo
Thanks for the post. It would definitely help brands with mobile conversion challenges. However, it only deals with some of the fundamental problems while there’s so much that goes into conversion.
Hi, nice article, thanks for the blog
A lot of visitors don't like to buy on mobile because typing their billing, shipping and credit card info into forms is too much work. So, they email the page to themselves and check out on desktop when they get home. There, they can also print a copy of what they purchased. Mobile websites that enable the customer to check out in just a few clicks have a big appeal. This can be done by offering PayPal checkout or another method of remembering customer data to facilitate easy checkout without a lot of typing.
Apple also found some "solution". They enable their payment system on Web for new versions of Safari.
A great mobile experience is one that recognizes and understand their mobile visitors. Yes, some people do not feel comfortable to check out on mobile which is why you really do need to help your customers make the transition to desktop. A good example is the "save for later" message which allows you to email a product to yourself and later check out. Another way is making it easier to checkout on mobile by simplifying the experience, removing unnecessary requests and adding incentives to complete the purchase.
Yes, mobile overlays is better than popups; besides, there are apps that zap popups anyway.
Well written piece with good research. The essential thing which a lot of these designers forget is thorough testing of the website in as many devices as practically possible before going live.
Talia, great content.
How do responsive design impact for e-commerce website which focus on B2B. Basically, searches will not be from mobile devices. What's your suggestion?
Hi Hobbes,
I'm not too sure searches aren't done on mobile, I would definitely check that out. However, most likely purchases won't be made on mobile - this of course depends on your target audience, product and many other parameters. Unfortunately there is no "one size to fit them all" - however if you do recognize lower conversions on mobile and that your customers are more willing to purchase on desktop you should make it a key goal of yours to help people transition from mobile to desktop. This means your mobile experience needs to be seamless and support your mobile visitor's goals. For example, a simple "save for later" feature has worked many times for us and our customers at Banana Splash.
R.E.S.S (Responsive Server Side) is what should be done because instead of offloading the crap to the visitor when you hide elements (phones still download all of this) a device detection library is used and so is a separate style sheet as well as HTML
We are very interested in the CRO. We are aware that getting traffic for your business is an action that costs time and money either SEO or SEM, but that's only part of the battle, what really matters is not the number of users coming to your site but that perform any conversion on it. So we are using all our efforts to learn more about this topic, because in Spain is beginning to have more acceptance.
Congratulations for the post! It has been of great help. <3
Whenever i land on this blog i always leave with some knowledge i didnt possess before & satisfaction of learning something new
Thanks
Thanks for this post, this post very informatics about responsive design.
We provide same services to our clients and ur post made me more help me
for more details visit this site:-https://www.dinpl.com/responsive-design/
I think someone else in the comments made the good point that whether mobile responsive or not...poor design in general is usually what leads to the issues. But it is super important to compare versions for sure!! We typically give things the 'eyeball' and 'usability' checks...and then followup with a tool like Visual Website Optimizer to make sure the user experiences is 100%.
Definitely, poor design is problematic, it decreases conversions and that definitely goes without saying. Responsive design is better than having to pinch and zoom for sure, however while you can spend more time optimizing the responsive design so it doesn't look bad - there's more to mobile visitors than just condensing all that content into a small screen. Even when done well and when it looks "nice" conversions are still very low on mobile web due to the amount of content on the mobile version and how hard it is for mobile visitors to find what they're looking for.
Thanks for the useful insights. It helps me a lot to build my website responsive.