What’s the deal with responsive designed websites?
First things first what in the world is a responsive design website?
A responsive design website simply means that the website is built of parts that will stack on top of each other and re-size to any screen they are put on. That means that whether you are on a desktop computer, or a smartphone, the website will look good, be sized right, and fully functional.
Many people think that they have a responsive design website when they do not. These are the types of websites that people commonly think of as responsive design and aren’t.
Mobile Website: This is a website that is specifically designed to show up on a smartphone and nowhere else. This is not responsive design because it will only show on a smartphone so you have to design your mobile site and a desktop site as well. Mobile sites often look very different than the desktop version of the site. It can be beneficial for businesses to get a mobile version of their website depending on what people are looking for their services.
Normal Website: There needs to be a specific clarification made here. Unless your website is built with flash content, it will show up on a mobile device. Because of this many people believe their website already works on smaller devices. Mobile phones and tablets have come a very long way and are more and more like computers every day.
The problem is that no matter how good a phone gets at connecting you to the website itself, the screen will always be smaller than one on a computer. That means that when someone is on your website on a smartphone, the content will shrink until it all fits on the screen. As you can imagine the problem with this is now the text, video, pictures, and navigation are all smaller than on a computer. Making it harder to engage with the content.
Now we know what isn’t a responsive website design, what is?
What is a responsive design website?
A responsive designed website is a website that is built specifically to stack content on top of itself to fit on any screen. That means that the content will be easy to read/view on any device. It is the same exact content, in the same exact order, yet it changes to look good on any device. What does that look like? Here are some pictures of the different types of websites I have been talking about so far.
Mobile website on mobile
Desktop version
Normal website on mobile
Desktop version
Responsive design website on mobile
Desktop version
As you can see there are some differences in appearance between a mobile website, a normal website, and a responsive design website. In fact the only ones that look different are the mobile website and the normal website on a mobile device. You don’t want a normal website to be shown on a mobile device because everything is so small it becomes very inconvenient. Nearly half of consumers say they will not return to a website if it does not work properly on a smart phone.
For your business there are two options to take advantage of mobile traffic. Mobile or Responsive design. The main difference is that if you build a responsive design website, it works great on any screen and only needs to be designed once.
If you choose a mobile website, you need to design it separate from your main website. This can be beneficial for companies who have different objectives for their mobile and desktop websites. If you want to know which is better for your business feel free to comment and we will respond to your request with our personal advice.
