Reponsive design

Responsive Design Is The Future of a User-Friendly Web

Published On: May 2, 2013 | Categories: Digital |

Responsive web design has become the latest trend. And it’s certainly only going to get hotter. Web designers and developers can’t get enough of this innovative technology as the shift to tablet and mobile devices grows daily. In the near future, your business needs to fit and display across all devices while maintaining primary content to remain competitive. So WHY should you care?

“Day by day, the number of devices, platforms,
and browsers that need to work with your site grows.
Responsive web design represents a fundamental shift
in how we’ll build websites for the decade to come.” – Jeffrey Veen

What’s responsive design?

A responsive website adapts all the content on the web page to nicely fit on any screen size. The site “responds” to different device sizes by adapting gradually from large to small through a combination of techniques. One site for every screen, it’s:

  • One site to build and manage
  • Better for SEO
  • More accommodating for the user
  • Less costly than building and maintaining both separate desktop and mobile sites

Check out www.BostonGlobe.com, www.starbucks.com or www.barackobama.com to see responsive design in action. Grab the corner of the page and scale it from desktop to tablet to mobile.

In our last post, Julie talked about mobile-optimized website importance. Knowing your specific online web goals will help you determine whether a separate mobile site is the right option vs. a responsive site.

Regardless, you need to have a mobile website to remain competitive on the Internet. Furthermore, you need to make sure your website is functional across all devices.

Usability should be top priority. Your customers are using multiple devices to accomplish their tasks. Google’s research reports that “90% of people move between devices to accomplish a goal, whether that’s on smartphones, PCs, tablets or TV.” Can your website perform on multiple devices? Is the performance seamless and user-friendly?

Take away

Don’t get left behind. People are on the go; don’t let your competition leave you in the dust with their responsive website.

What other web trends do you see impacting web usability in the future?

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Brianne Boysen contributed to this post.

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