Responsive Web Design
Web design has evolved significantly in the last ten years. Mobile web users now outnumber desktop users and given the fact that your website is often the first “point-of-contact” with a potential customer, you have to make sure it counts.
If you ignored responsive web design during your site’s last redesign, chances are you’ve paid dearly for that mistake and will continue to do so unless this issue is addressed.
What is Responsive Web Design?
From a definition standpoint, Wikipedia defines responsive web design as “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).”
From a conceptual view point, responsive web design idea is rather simple. Develop web pages that “work” on all devices including mobile devices, tablets, and desktops. However, it is important to understand that the definition of “work” is still a subjective term. Today, mobile browsers have come a long way and most of them are able to render even the table-based websites of the late nineties in a fairly acceptable manner. What is debatable though is the user experience. For example, you can have a website that fits perfectly on all mobile devices yet provides an unacceptable user experience. User experience is lot more than just responsive design and needs to be addressed as a core component of any website design or redesign project.
History
Ethan Marcotte first described responsive web design in an article published back in 2010. Back in 2010, Marcotte made a prediction that mobile web users will exceed desktop web users in three to five years. This shift did occur in 2014, so Marcotte was spot on with his prediction. In terms of website design, website layout conversation has always been tied to screen size. For example, this has always been important even during the late nineties when fixed-width websites used 768px as a base layout to recent years where 1920X1080 screen resolution drives most websites. While fixed width design is easy to understand and develop, Marcotte proposed that the only way to design the websites of the future is to focus on flexible and fluid web design techniques. In flexible design architecture, the design isn’t tied to just one fixed width but combines three distinct concepts – flexible widths, flexible image sizes and media queries in CSS to handle different screen resolutions on user devices.
Why Responsive Web Design
In 2014, the number of mobile web users surpassed desktop users. A fully responsive website should work on any device from large screen monitors to tablets and smartphones. All of our website design work is fully responsive, and you don’t pay extra for a mobile-friendly website. In recent years, some customers have taken an approach to building dedicated sites for tablets and smartphones to improve website usability. Although Google does not recommend this approach, if user experience is your top priority, we can develop device-specific websites with matching content across all platforms to deliver exceptional usability and user experience.
How We Can Help
At Amplimark, we focus on “mobile first” approach when we develop a new website. A mobile first strategy is critical to ensure that a website is designed for mobile devices before addressing the design components of traditional desktops and laptop computers. We make sure that your website visitors get exceptional user experience whether they visit your website on a smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, or even a 4K monitor that is not yet very common.
Does your business need a responsive website? Contact us online or give us a call at (515) 225-6438 to schedule a free, no-obligation initial consultation!
