Web developers are used to make their apps available on all platforms in order to reach a lot of users. They need to make app that can fit all screen size. To achieve that, they need to build a version of the app for every targeted platform. But what you have to know is that building, deploying and updating for many platforms is sometimes a real hassle. That’s why responsive applications are becoming the main option.
In fact, developers can make their website or app available on all devices, and the users won’t need to download anything no matter the device they are using. That’s the concept behind responsiveness.
Responsive design uses cascading style sheet, flexible images, media queries and flexible layouts to build websites that detect the orientation and the screen size of the visitor’s device and change the layout accordingly. Instead of fixed-width parameters, mathematical percentages are used for images and x and y coordinates are used on a grid. With this approach a more fluid layout is created and is able to resize itself to fit the size of each display.
Media queries are a feature of cascading style sheets (CSS). It allows developers to target style sheets to a device’s display. So instead of building a special mobile version of a website, developers can build for a same web page, multiple style sheets. It save considerable development time because HTML code doesn’t have to be rewritten.
The picture below shows different images arrangement when the user browses the site on desktop and on mobile:
Advantages of responsive web design
Here are a few advantages of responsive web design:
• It saves time:
If you start with a good planning, RWD can be efficient because, for every channel you aim, you are not required to create all new content. Instead, you will just need to adjust the layout and the amount of the visual content that you’ve created first. The responsive web design allows to write a single code for every channel.
• It saves money:
The customer saves a lot of money because he doesn’t need to pay for one website, mobile apps and mobile websites. He just has to pay for the development of only one website. It is the same thing for the support. And publishing new content is very fast and easy because it goes to only one place. So it saves a lot of time no matter who is updating.
• It helps for SEO:
With a same consistent URL for mobile and desktop search bots and mobile and desktop users, any site you build has uniformity. This increases crawler efficiency, and is simpler for Google’s link algorithms.
• It helps your customers find information easier anywhere and anytime:
Using RWD for your website means that it will get more visitors who are using devices with different screen sizes, such as smartphones and tablets. A visitor is more likely to buy services and products from a website that he is able to visit on his device.
• Your website perform better:
Using mobile-first-approach helps to have cleaner and faster performing code on desktop and mobile size devices.
Cons of responsive web design
Here are the few pitfalls to RWD:
• Development time and costs could be much more as expected
Don’t start a responsive project without knowing what you are doing. If you do so the development will take you a lot of money and time. The best choice for you is to contact a professional to let you do it. Even if you are a developer, you can pay others to do a job for you. In this case if you don’t know anything about RWD essentials, you will have to learn and it will take you a lot of time. Instead of that of when you will be learning, you can call professional developers to build a responsive website for you. At Razor Theory, that’s what we do. We build cutting-edge mobile apps, web apps and websites. RWD is not a secret for us and our clients are always satisfied. You can check our works and judge by yourself.
• Slower downloads:
If you choose RWD, be sure to master images handling. Because when a visitor, no matter the device he is using, visits your website, it must load all of the elements on every device, which is slow and takes time. These elements include the images.
• Content has to be the same on all OS and platforms
When you visit responsive websites, please be careful and you’ll note something with some of them: the content is not the same on all OS and platforms. Indeed some developers try to do the work easily and quickly and when they have to deal with a content that tend to be difficult to handle, they just hide it. Don’t do the same thing. Be sure to learn everything about how to manage forms, tables and navigation on every device.
• Visitors don’t want to have the same experience on every device
Make sure to optimize the experience across all devices. Make sure that the user won’t feel the same basic experience when he quits a desktop device to a mobile device. Experience needs to be different but all the content must be there. Make sure to include everything.
To summarize you must make the user feel great when browsing the website on any device. For that he needs to see the same content everywhere but not the same design.
This part is not difficult, you just need to be creative. And that is our main tool at Razor Theory: creativity. We are creative when building our responsive websites and that’s why we give the user a very good experience on all devices.
Are you ready for responsive web design?
Before you start with RWD check out the evaluation checklist below to make sure that you are ready.
• Is it actually necessary for your website?
Figure out if you just need to optimize some parts or all the website. Use Google Analytics to figure out what devices are used to access to your website and the most used screen resolution. You have to know that RWD is perfect for location-based services, corporate websites, media sites and blog.
• Do you have the required knowledge?
RWD can be more difficult to master than you think. Be sure to know the basics of web development. There are a lot of responsive tools and frameworks for beginners that you can use to start. There are templates too. But the best is to learn all about RWD to avoid a lot of problems later.
• Have you got the required tools for testing?
There are a lot of tools to test your website but the best is to have a set of devices to do it. With the help of Google Analytics you know the devices used by your audience. So you will have to invest in owning your own devices.
• Are you ready to go through design limitations?
RWD is not like mobile design. There are some limitations of how websites are displayed. So it is important to advise clients, expect their revisions.
If you have answer yes to all the 4 questions above, so you are ready to go.
RWD is a good way to display your website on all devices and platforms. It is easier to update the website by changing only code. But before you start with it, be sure to know the basics of web development and to have the tools required for that. If you can’t do it well, don’t panic. Save your time and your neurons: contact a professional to do it for you. Razor Theory is a great company in the domain. Our showcase talks more about it. Check it and you won’t be disappointed.