Should You Implement Responsive Web Design?

From Desktops, laptops, and tablets to mini-tablets, e-readers and smartphones, almost every person that visits your website will see it a little bit differently. The era of building websites to solely fit on either a 15 or a 17 inch laptop screen are over. There is no longer one standard size for a website because there are so many sizes of devices available. With growing client demands and Google updates that favor responsive web design, many companies are striving to ensure their websites are up to par. However, creating a website with responsive web design is an involved process that requires technical expertise to be implemented correctly.

Web surfers want an easy to navigate, user-friendly website across all devices:

  • You have 5 seconds to immediately capture a user’s attention or they will click away (bounce rate)
  • If you get past the typical 5 second bounce rate, you now have 60 seconds of their browsing time before they leave if they are uninterested
  • Get a user to stay past 60 seconds and you exponentially increase the odds they will take advantage of your products or services
  • Tablet sales are expected to exceed 100 million in 2013

Responsive web design was created to make the user experience significantly better and keep visitors browsing longer. There are many considerations that go into the planning of a responsive website, including creating the best possible user experience, the new high density screens and trying to implement changes without a complete HTML overhaul. How do web designers address the various aspects that go into responsive web design?

Better user experience

Responsive web design is all about user experience. Even though your site can be viewed on any device as it is, if it is not responsive it will be difficult to navigate. Having to zoom in or scroll sideways is a huge determent from keeping customers browsing. Sites that rely heavily on purchases made online especially have to be conscientious of whether or not a site is user-friendly. More website browsing and online purchasing is done on mobile devices than ever before. Losing touch with your target audience because your website is not up to date is one of the easiest ways to lose potential sales.

High Density Screens vs. Images

The introduction of high density screens, or screens with a pixel ratio that is greater than 2:1, can compromise the viewing quality of websites with photos that are in a 1:1 ratio. This means that regular pictures viewed on a high density screen would look blurry. An easy fix would be to double the size of the image when viewed on a high density screen but that also cuts into the performance because loading a large picture takes more time. One solution to this is to have multiple versions of the same image cropped to different sizes allowing them to be viewed on multiple types of devices. Whether the device your site is being viewed on has a High Density Screen or not, the viewing experience will be perfect every time with the intuitive nature of responsive web design.

Media Queries

Media queriess allow you to use different style sheets in order to give consumers a different user experience. A user agent script is inserted into the website’s code to detect the type of device being used. This permits the device to display different layouts such as portrait or landscape. By calculating the size of the width, the media query rule the developer establishes gives the user a more responsive experience. The use of media queries has become a successful and popular approach to web design and development.

Why go responsive?

  • Google recommends it
  • Your website will load quicker
  • Higher performance
  • 80% of people use a completely different device type (phone, tablet, laptop) to view your site
  • 67% of online shopping is done from multiple devices

If you don’t already have plans in the works for a responsive web re-design, it’s something to consider adding to your agenda. Some responsive upgrades can be achieved with new technology and can significantly improve usability and decrease the bounce rate of your website with certain devices. Responsive web design will become more and more important to consumers the more widely implemented it becomes. It’s important to stay up to date with latest trends to make sure you don’t fall behind in the competitive online marketplace.

If you have any questions or would like to learn about what the team here can do to implement responsive web design to your website, please call us at 844-523-1957.

Should You Implement Responsive Web Design? was last modified: December 15th, 2014 by
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