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If you've ever taken a moment to browse through the U.S. government's various websites, you've probably noticed one thing: the quality of these sites' design varies.

 

And it varies a lot. The FBI's home page, for example, looks like it came straight out of 2005.

 

That's why the federal government recently released a new set of design standards to bring all federal websites up to speed.

 

According to TheNextWeb.com, the U.S. Chief Information Officer has released a comprehensive set of guidelines and open-source components aimed at helping federal websites adopt clean, mobile-friendly and current designs.

 

The guidelines are also intended to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find the information they seek on government websites with uniform, easy-to-use navigation systems that incorporate similar color and coding schemes. This will make the government's various websites seem like they're all interconnected, rather than make it seem like government agencies are fragmented and operate separately from each other.

 

It's no surprise that the government is finally trying to give all its various websites -- of which there are many -- a facelift. The relationship between website design and SEO, or search engine optimization, is becoming more apparent than ever before, with search engines heavily weighing design quality when creating its rankings.

 

Recent research has shown that 34% of web users exclusively browse the Internet on their smartphones. Additionally, 47% of users expect a website's load times to be less than two seconds -- and another 40% will click away from a website if it doesn't have responsive, mobile-friendly design!

 

As a result, no website can afford to let its website design and maintenance fall to the bottom of its list of priorities -- or to ignore responsive web design.