
Why you need a responsive website now
What a responsive site is (and isn’t)
What is a responsive website? To start with, you probably already know what it’s not. When you find yourself squinting into your mobile device to view miniscule font, that’s not responsive. When you have to scroll, pinch and zoom with your finger to try to finish reading one line of text, that’s not responsive. And when you shrink your desktop browser and lose view of the site, that’s not responsive either.
What is responsive then? For starters, it should be said that there’s a lot of disagreement in the web design community over how exactly to define responsive design (vs. other terms you may hear, like adaptive design). But however you define it, the one thing that’s certain is that a responsive site is one that conforms to the size of the device or browser, resizing and repositioning text and images to fit.
How does it do this? First, design elements in the site (like images, text boxes, buttons) are assigned proportions on a fluid grid (rather than as fixed positions on an X-Y axis). This means that an image meant to take up 30% of available screen space will take up 30% of any size screen, whatever the orientation. Compare this to the type of unresponsive fixed-size site mentioned earlier: shrinking the browser is just shrinking the size of your window, and everything at the edges is lost from view.
More poetically, responsive design has been compared to the physical properties of water (as described by martial arts master Bruce Lee): “you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle; you put water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot”.
But if this is responsive design, why is it so essential?
Why responsive design matters
The world has gone mobile and there’s no turning back
Last year Google announced that there are more searches performed on mobile than desktop. 2015 also marked the moment when mobile email open rates surpassed desktop (a number which now sits around 56% mobile). Now that doesn’t mean that people are abandoning desktop. In fact there’s argument that we’re just spending more time on all devices. But it does mean users expect to find your brand on mobile. What can you do about that?
The old solution was to create a mobile-only “m-site”, designed exclusively for mobile and intended to sit side-by-side a pre-existing desktop site. But that meant building, updating and maintaining an entirely separate site, meaning lots more work in the long run. And now with the increasing diversity of mobile device sizes (tablets, phablets and any number of mobile phones), a site designed for a specific, standardized mobile phone size has become a relic of the past.
The challenge now is to provide your users with the best experience possible, whatever device size they’re using (or may use in the future).
Responsive design provides better user experience
- It renders well on any device
When 73% of users (link opens pdf) say it’s important that content displays well on the device they’re using, you can be sure that a large number of them will abandon a site that’s not made with mobile in mind. By designing a website that renders well regardless of device size or browser resolution you can help your users enjoy the frictionless experience they’re coming to expect. - A mobile mindset
Unlike the bloated, multi-column, text-dense layouts that still persist in unreformed desktop sites, the upfront planning of a responsive site requires a mobile-first approach that will prioritize simplicity, clarity and ease-of-use. - Faster loading times
While image-heavy sites may present challenges for responsive site loading times, the fact of not having to reroute to a dedicated mobile site will make it faster for users to access your content.
But it’s not only your users who want a better user experience via responsive design, it’s Google, too.
Google responsive
In April 2015 Google announced an algorithm update that many believed would presage the end of the internet as we knew it. In a nutshell, Google said search results would favor mobile-friendly sites, which of course led everyone to conclude that non-mobile-optimized sites would be punished on search rankings. No surprise that it was quickly dubbed “Mobilegeddon” in the press. Hyperbole aside, the one thing that became clear is that Google is serious about mobile friendliness, and particularly recommends using responsive design to achieve it.
One year on and Mobilegedden’s effects can be measured less in terms of actual damage done than in terms of the change in behavior Google’s carrot-and-stick approach caused. As Smashing Magazine recently reported, since the Mobilegedden announcement there’s been a 25% increase in mobile-friendly sites, with 85% of those choosing responsive design as the mobile-optimization strategy of choice.
One single URL means many fewer problems
Having a responsive site gives you the luxury of having a single site with a single URL. This has a number of hassle-saving benefits, including:
- making it easier for users to find and share your content
- having one URL reputation to build and maintain, which will help make your search rankings stronger
- reducing the possibility of mistakes that multiply when working on multiple sites
- giving Googlebots less work to do, which means they’ll be able to index your content more quickly and efficiently.
It’ll save you money in the long run
With changes in device sizes and browsing habits changing with every quarter, the best way to future-proof your website is building one that can respond to any of these changes. While you may have to spend more money up front (there’s more design and development effort required in planning and building a responsive site) it will pay off in the long run with only one, universally accessible site to update and maintain.
Conclusion: Where to go from here
If your only goal is to make your outdated site mobile-friendly, you can retro-fit an existing non-responsive site to make it adapt to mobile devices. The advantage of this approach is that it doesn’t require a front-end re-think. You don’t have to plan and design a new site. But you do need a programmer to do the job. And the results aren’t always pretty.
But if your goal is to offer your users a mobile-friendly site that both looks good on any device they use or may use in the future and saves you time and money down the road, the thing to do, as Bruce Lee concluded, is be water, my friend. Join the post-Mobilegedden wave of responsive design uptake and invest in a responsive site today.
Moskito Design designs and builds great-looking responsive sites, landing pages and email marketing newsletters for customers big and small.