There have been a lot of articles and discussions in the design world about Responsive Mobile Website design. I thought I would answer a few of the most commonly asked questions about this new design platform, but if you have any additional questions, please feel free to ask them in our comments section!
Is Responsive Mobile Website Design the Future?
No. Responsive website design is the NOW. Smart phones are the standard, and tablet devices are flooding the market—more and more people are using them to browse websites. With marketers prompting users via QR codes, email marketing, etc., mobile compatible sites are becoming the norm. If you don’t have a mobile presence, you’re losing visitors.
What is a Mobile Responsive Website?
A Mobile Responsive Website is a website that is built to suite different screen resolutions while keeping the majority of the content in one area: where your current website content lives. By using this technique, you only build one version of your website (one codebase serves all). No more secondary mobile version.
The Benefit:
The benefit of having this is that you only need to add content to your website once instead of having multiple website to accommodate different devices.
Example of Responsive Design:
The Boston Globe has an impressive responsive design structure. They figured out how to display a plethora of information and scale it into a simple mobile view without sacrificing key information. If you scale your browser window you will notice element moving and scaling to accommodate different screen widths. At every view, it looks stellar. Check out three screen widths of Boston Globe taken from last Wednesday below the post.
The Downside:
The downside to this process means more time to design and code the website. The development isn’t as time-consuming as the design (depending on the complexity). Designers will now have to design every page layout in at least four different screen views: 960 pixels (standard desktop screens and horizontal tablet view), 768 pixels (vertical tablet view), 600 pixels (horizontal mobile view) and 320 pixels (vertical mobile view). These pixel widths are constantly changing due to the new devices being introduced but will give you an idea of the basic screen widths.
If you’re not on the mobile bandwagon, it’s time to do your research on this technique. Ask your website developer if it’s beneficial for your company (because chances are… it is).
