In the field of Web design and development, were quickly getting to the point of being unable to keep up with the endless new resolutions and devices. For many websites, creating a website version for each resolution and new device would be impossible, or at least impractical. Should we just suffer the consequences of losing visitors from one device, for the benefit of gaining visitors from another? Or is there another option?
Responsive web design represents a fundamental shift in how well build websites for the decade to come. Day by day, the number of devices, platforms, and browsers that need to work with your site grows. Responsive web design (RWD) is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones).
Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the users behaviour and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and an intelligent use of CSS media queries. As the user switches from their laptop to iPad, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. In other words, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the users preferences. This would eliminate the need for a different design and development phase for each new gadget on the market.
By essentially giving a custom solution for each mobile platform, responsive website design makes for a better user experience on a wider range of devices. There are a lot of features of perfect responsive web design which are very helpful for everyone.
It is important that the content can flow and adjust according to the space. Responsive web design sites are fluid, meaning the content moves freely across all screen resolutions and all devices. Both the grids and the images are fluid. Just as a liquid spreads out or draws in to allow its content to fill an allotted space and retain its appearance, responsive web designs fluidity achieves the same result with website content on a device screen.
With 67% search market share, when Google speaks, search marketers listen. Google states that responsive web design is its recommended mobile configuration, and even goes so far as to refer to responsive web design as the industry best practice. This is because responsive design sites have one URL and the same HTML, regardless of device, which makes it easier and more efficient for Google to crawl, index, and organize content. Contrast this with a separate mobile site which has a different URL and different HTML than its desktop counterpart, requiring Google to crawl and index multiple versions of the same site. Additionally, Google prefers responsive web design because content that lives on one website and one URL is much easier for users to share, interact with, and link to than content that lives on a separate mobile site. Take for example a mobile user who shares content from a mobile site with a friend on Facebook who then accesses that content using a desktop, which results in that user viewing a stripped down mobile site on their desktop. This creates a less than optimal user-experience, and because of the large emphasis Google is now placing on user-experience as a ranking factor, this is essential to take into account with regards to SEO.
“We really appreciated IMGNRS’s hands-on approach as well as their ability to contribute not just with design but with the overall idea of the project.”
Ganesh