Mobile friendly websites are more important for your business than ever thanks to the increased usage of tablets and smartphones. Before these devices became so popular, web developers only had to deal with the challenge of making sure their website design had the same look and feel on different browsers.
Alas, interacting with a website on a tablet or smartphone is a different animal than interacting with it on a desktop computer monitor. Responsive design now has to factor in screen size, touch versus click, and pixel resolution. Before we discuss why responsive design is important for your website, first we should establish what the term responsive design means.
What is Responsive Design?
Responsive design is a way of coding and laying out a website that provides the user with an optimal viewing experience. This means that the website is easy to read on a variety of devices without a great deal of scrolling, panning, or resizing. Responsive design now has to encompass viewing on desktop computers, tablets, and various size mobile phones.
Web designers have to ensure that a website’s navigation elements, images, text, user interface elements, audio and video players, and screen layouts adjust automatically on different devices. This is done so the website owner does not have to spend extra money and time having a separate mobile version and desktop version of their website made.
What About the Time and Money?
People believe that having a responsive website built is expensive, but that is not the case. It is true that building a responsive website costs more than a conventional website, but the tradeoff is that you only need one design. You eliminate the expense involved in having a duplicate website built for mobile devices. The total cost of website ownership is reduced with responsive design as well, because you only have to maintain one website. Having separate versions of your website requires separate maintenance, and thus costs more money. In the long term, responsive design is the best investment.
Your User’s Experience
Content is important, but users must be able to access that content on any platform if you want them to continue to visit your website. You cannot assume that if your website does not work correctly on their phone that they will wait until they get home to access it. Most likely, they will move on to your competition.
The Future
Since smart phones and tablets are so popular, responsive design that works on all mobile devices is going to be the norm in the future. Therefore, now is the time to build a website using responsive design. Digital content should be viewable on a variety of different devices, and responsive web design is the way of the future. The good news is that it is available right now.
