Have you ever pulled up a website from your tablet or smartphone and growled in frustration when you couldn’t seem to click on those teeny, tiny buttons? Or how about those domains that would look great on a 27 inch PC monitor, but on your digital device it’s just a sea of never-ending background color. Yeah, those sites suck for us living in the 21st century.
That’s where responsive website design comes into play. It is the new standard of HTML (known as HTML5) that allows web developers to develop platforms for a number of different devices simultaneously within the same code. In English, that means that no matter what size your viewing screen is, the layout is optimized for you to interact with the website.
How does Responsive Web Design Work
So how does it work? Without getting too technical, HTML5 checks the device that it’s being displayed on before generating an image, and then it scales the content down for the best possible resolution. As you can see in the example provided above, the actual content areas will shrink, stretch or appear in a completely different area in order to present the best possible layout on any device, which benefits you, the end-user, and anyone else who may access this webpage.
When is Responsive Design a Bad Idea?
Then again, there’s no sense in changing something that isn’t broken in the first place. So whenever a potential customer asks about the drawbacks of responsive website design, we tell them that if their site is already converting well, then they should leave it alone. Responsive design is slower than a traditional web layout, and it can become significantly slower on a busy domain like eBay or any big company with lots of users. In these situations, it would probably be better to have a mobile website designed instead, which is a stripped-down version of your regular site that’s optimized for smartphones.
Do Businesses Need a Responsive Website?
As we mentioned earlier, that can sometimes be a tough question to answer. For big business, a mobile site is almost always a better answer, although responsive layouts are probably better for lead generation sites with mostly static pages. In any case, businesses need to market where their customers are and almost 90% of the US population is now accessing the web from a smartphone at least six times per day.
Think about it this way. If a consumer performs a web search from their smartphone for something like, “BBQ in Greenville” or “Web Design Spartanburg, SC”, they are not looking for general information. These are people that are 70-80% of the way through making a purchase decision and they are using the Internet to make a commitment. If your main competitor’s website is responsive (or mobile) and yours is not, then there’s a good chance that we all know where that shopper is going to end up.
At Upstate Synergy, we build beautiful responsive websites for Spartanburg businesses because it is a great way to keep our local area consumers happy. For more information on having a responsive website built or to learn how to vault to the top of Google, please feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience. While few things in life are ever free, we are always happy to educate our potential clients in how they can generate more revenue.