I've made my main site responsive and, in my opinion, that's the only way to do it. I've seen no change to revenue.

Are your site(s) mobile ready?

In one word?

NO

Then again, friends who must persist in this latest revolution say, they render well.

Why do I not care? I deliver lectures, I cannot conceive why any sane person would read my sites on mobile except to cheat in an exam.

As one colourful person said here a few years back...

Develop a mobile application with the wrong answers!

My site is responsive and I think it makes a difference. I kind of accidentally ended up with a responsive design when a delightfully over zealous designer added it into a site design makeover after I enquired if he knew what it was. So my site went from a ho-hum non-responsive design to a better laid out, more visually appealing responsive design. So, revenue did go up but can't say if responsive had anything to do with it.

I would say that in today's world, a responsive design is a must. I know that my site sees nearly 50% of its traffic from phones and tablets.

I also like responsive design from a site owner's perspective. I have much greater control over how people interact with the site. Once you get your head around how responsive works, modifying it is pretty easy.

It may or may not affect my revenue but I know that it gives people greater access to my information presented in a way that I control.

I cannot conceive why any sane person would read my sites on mobile except to cheat in an exam.

For a significant portion of the US, mobile phones are their only convenient access to the internet. I don't have hard numbers, but let's just say that a personal thing in my life gives me access to a certain subset of the population and I can tell you unequivocally that these people can only access the internet via their phones. It is not really a small subset, either.

Beyond that, some people just prefer to surf the web on their phones and tablets. I know I watch videos all the time on my phone (both for entertainment and professional enrichment) and I ONLY read the news and professional articles on my phone and my husband watches TV shows all the time on his tablet. I am not going to lug my laptop around just to relax and watch videos or to catch up on news and information and you never know when you will need to kill time at the doctor's office or in traffic or other time wasting wait moments in life.

Yes. 70+% of my traffic is mobile, so I'd be pretty stupid if I didn't.

BTW, WebmasterWorld PTBs....

I find it really annoying that this site is not responsive. Lots of pinching and squinting involved to get around.

I took the decision quite awhile back that all new sites would be fully responsive in html5. These sites have a predefined width and render beautifully across all modern browsers, PCs, laptops, all tablets (FYI Google expects the desktop version of a site to be the same on tablets) and on all major smartphones I have tested.

If yes, did it help improve your revenue or still the same?

Immaterial to me since my AdSense earnings have collapsed to almost pointless but for those existing sites I have already converted the earnings have stayed the same. Most new sites do not carry any advertsing whatsoever now but I must say that using the specific mobile ad 300x250 has delivered quite a few USD 1.00+ clicks on smartphones.

Would you recommend having a mobile version of your site? Do you think it's a must?

Yes and yes, there is absolutely no necessity to have separate sites BUT I do not have any ecommerce site therefore I have no idea about that.

Please give us some pros or/and cons.

Getting to girps with the basics of html5 was not a problem however learning many of the intricacies were an absolute pain and some were almost impossible to find the answer to.

Now I have these html5 sites running there is no way I would go back, much easier to update and much cleaner code etc. One recommendation is to regularly use an html5 validator, I probably learnt more using that and where I was making mistakes than from anything else.

A local hotel site I re-launched only the beginning of last week has drawn me and the owner more positive comments than in the past 6-7 years and it is already noticeable that accommodation enquiries and bookings are already up significantly.

Thank you so much for all your very informative advice. Im now convinced to make my sites responsive. I'll try the plugin WPtouch. I believe it cost $100 for 5 sites. Anyone using it?

I used it and gave it up on the advice of my hosting company, who told me it was a severe performance suck when my peak traffic kicked in. That was several years ago, they may have improved it. But you probably want to watch out for that.

Anyone using it?

I have not used that version, but I would say just find a good designer/developer to do the conversion. If you are already CSS (lord help you if you are not), it is really not hard for a knowledgeable designer/developer to make it responsive.

*And for the record, I am not a great designer/developer and I have successfully retrofitted a few of my small sites to be responsive. Like I said, once you get your head wrapped around it, it it pretty easy to understand.

I switched my biggest site to responsive last fall, mobile visitors was around the 36% mark (6 months ago), it's already up to 43% now. I did see a slight drop in revenue but every ad unit changed, including positioning, with the exception of the footer ad.

I have seen traffic go up since then so earnings are back to "normal" anyway. I'd take a slight hit in earnings any day to deliver a better user experience, that's better in the long run. Happier visitors = more return visits IMHO.

There's no cut or dry answer as to whether you should have mobile. Check your logs, if you see the # of mobile visitors climbing then go for it. If it stays low (say 10%) then there's no need to rush into doing so. But, just have a mobile site won't hurt anything.

About 10% of my traffic is mobile, so I am not in a huge rush. If and when I get to it, I'd have to hire someone to make the changes. I can't get my head around it.

I hired a designer to basically convert my existing site to be responsive, along with some tweaks along the way (static HTML, not WordPress). It was money well spent.

Could you explain to me why other big sites chose not to be responsive?

Responsive design has been a big part of revenue increases for me over the past year. My main site get's tons of mobile traffic and revenue from phones and tablets often exceed desktop earnings. I'd say it depends on the site. Some content (quick bits of information generally) is tailor-made for mobile while you really have to work if you want to read a book on a cell phone. And who wants to click on an ad when they're more interested in getting through the third chapter of your latest novel. So results may vary.

Could you explain to me why other big sites chose not to be responsive?

If I had to guess, judging from my consulting days, many large sites are run on proprietary content management systems that are often over wrought and difficult to change. Companies are dependent on the creators of the content management software (who has no incentive to update software you already bought) or an internal IT team who has other duties to other departments to fulfill, so such requests get put on a waiting list.

And, the bureaucracy. Such decisions have to go through several layers of the company, many of which have no idea about how websites work or how people use websites.

The same use to be said for big sites and SEO. It's along the same lines.

My primary adsense site isn't mobile friendly, but it isn't bad on mobile either. Most of my visitors are on desktops, with about 1% being mobile (you'd have to understand the niche). Some of my other sites ARE mobile friendly, but it does little, if anything for my revenue. The biggest problem with mobile sites is that ads are considered an annoyance due to the limited amount of screen space and the fact that most sites make ads 'sticky'. I myself browse mobile websites quite a bit, and i find mobile ads to be quite repulsive and avoid clicking on them at any rate.

If I had to guess, judging from my consulting days, many large sites are run on proprietary content management systems that are often over wrought and difficult to change. Companies are dependent on the creators of the content management software (who has no incentive to update software you already bought) or an internal IT team who has other duties to other departments to fulfill, so such requests get put on a waiting list.

And, the bureaucracy. Such decisions have to go through several layers of the company, many of which have no idea about how websites work or how people use websites.

The same use to be said for big sites and SEO. It's along the same lines.

I'll add that it isn't necessarily about big proprietary systems. Sometimes it's because we know that mobile users simply do not convert like desktop users. As one of my clients said best, spending hours upon hours to have a slick mobile site doesn't pay if nobody buys from your site when on mobile.

I am in the process of making my sites responsive as I actually feel it is important. I can also see that having done that, there is scope for improving the experience for desktop users.
I used to fix the page width at around 900px but am now going to a max width of 970, and shall get more info above the fold. I may at a later date take it wider still

Sometimes it's because we know that mobile users simply do not convert like desktop users.

Bearing in mind mine are all company brochure sites and that AdSense cannot recognise some mobiles and tablets, WIN8 especially, these are my metrics so far in 2014:

Earnings

Desktop 75%
Tablet 17.5%
Smartphone 7.5%

CTR v Average

Desktop 95.9%
Tablet 129.8%
Smartphone 96.3%

CPC v Average

Desktop 104%
Tablet 112%
Smartphone 80%

RPM v Average

Desktop 96.4%
Tablet 141.0%
Smartphone 76.4%

A guesstimate would have to be that as more people move on to better HD smartphones etc that those metrics will improve since for the same period 2013 desktop took 79.3% of overall earnings, 2012 it was 92% and 2011 it was 95.5%.

Clearly a trend and which I guess desktop will be down to 50% within what, a couple of years, end of 2015?

I hate it when some mad sites redirect me to the m.site designed for a 320 pixel width ancient cell phone.

I have a Huawei Ascend P6 with 1280 x 720 screen resolution.

More and more cell phones have more screen resolution than
a notebook 15 years ago
a netbook 5 years ago

@jetteroheller I completely agree. I always feel i've been redirected to a cut down site, too.

I have to try 9 or 10 times just to login to Adsense because of this mobile-compatible BS.

I had to choose between full responsive/mobile (front end) and full back-end responsive website. I went for the 2nd option and quite happy about it, the server detects the platform and uses exactly the same urls to serve mobile content with amazing speed and layout still responsive to mobile screen sizes, no m.whatever, no wathever.mobi, no whatever.com/mobile. The CSS is not even half of the desktop website: lots of savings.

Been doing fine, and adsense earnings kinda recovered BUT, there is one site, authority in it's field getting far too many lazy questions like "I'm about to... and I need X right away". Yes, it's a mobile site but not a live chat full instant customer service...

Jbayabas: Could you explain to me why other big sites chose not to be responsive?

I'm guessing here, but big sites FROM big companies face many challenges and have several "experts" giving terrible expensive advice and offers. Big sites from big companies move slow and adapt slowly (if ever).

I agree with hannamyluv, and there is more to say, I've seen big companies being total jerks with their webmasters so, very often after the job is done nobody wants to know about the company anymore.

eek2121 has a point there too.