With emerging technologies, the usage of mobile devices has increased dramatically. According to Statista, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 50.81 percent of global website traffic in the third quarter of 2020. Because of this reason, the need for responsive web design is vital more than before.
What is Responsive Web Design?
Responsive web design is simply designing your web content to adopt various screen resolutions of different devices.
For example, you can design your site with multiple columns for desktop screens as they are wide enough for the users to access easily. But, in mobile screens, the same design with multiple columns will be a headache for the user. In this case, you have to create another version with lesser columns for easy access on mobile devices.
And nowadays, there are thousands of mobile devices with various screen resolutions worldwide. Creating another version for a specific mobile device is extra work. And what about creating multiple versions? You wouldn’t even imagine that.
That is where responsive web design comes to your rescue. With responsive web design, you can create multiple, separate layouts of your content and design to deliver to different devices depending on the screen size.
Why is Responsive Web Design Important?
With emerging technologies, the usage of mobile devices will increase in the future. In fact, the majority of website traffic comes from mobile devices already. When half of your potential customers visit your site with mobile devices, you will lose their interest if you serve them a page designated for desktops. Desktop pages are hard to read and use, hence lead to a bad user experience.
Even Google prefers responsive websites because of this reason and instructed the site owners to create “mobile first” sites. But that’s not all. The vast majority of social media users and youtube viewers comes from mobile devices. If you choose to advertise on social media or do Youtube SEO, your site must be able to provide a mobile-optimized page; otherwise, you’ll fail with your marketing approaches.
Responsive Design Vs. Adaptive Design
Some may think that both technics are the same, but there’s a difference between them.
Responsive design adapts the rendering of a single-page version. But, the adaptive design delivers completely different versions of the same page.
While both approaches are recognized and acceptable, the needs can be different.
For example, a blog may need a responsive design as the owner wants to show everything (including widgets and menus) to all of his readers. A news site may not need it as users of a news site visits a page for that specific news and no more.
So, choosing a responsive design or adaptive design doesn’t make any difference as long as you want a mobile accessible site.
Is My Site Responsive?
If you are unsure about your website’s responsiveness, the best way to find, it is using Chrome Developer Tools. It’s a free toolset available for Chrome web browser, and you can download and install the plugin via the Chrome web store.
The easiest way to check your site’s responsiveness is, however, browsing your site via different devices such as different sized mobile phones and tabs. This way, you can have your site’s actual experience in mobile devices and decide what needs to be done quickly.
How to Make a Website Responsive?
If you use WordPress for your website, choosing a responsive theme will do the trick. But, if you are using other means for your site, such as a custom PHP template, it’s better to hire a web developer to do the job as it involves much technical stuff. Without an understanding of even HTML or CSS, the chances of making mistakes are high. And even one mistake can make your site unresponsive or slow down.
