In today’s market, your web site is under greater pressure than ever to serve your users’ needs in any situation. Whether it’s seen on a desktop monitor, tablet or smart phone, the experience must be fast, focused and intuitive. It also has to be flexible to your own needs and help you deliver your message to the widest audience possible.

Enter Responsive Web Design.

A Brief History of the Problem

The emergence of smartphones kicked off a new era of mobile computing and left interactive agencies with a new and very real challenge. How do we deliver a good experience for the user on such a small screen? Initially, the solution was to create multiple versions of a client’s website which included one for “desktop” viewing and one for “mobile” viewing. This was a predictable but problematic approach. First, you now have two websites that need to be maintained creating a new workload. Second, the smartphone market began to change rapidly with multiple devices using many different sizes and resolutions. How do you ensure that your site renders properly on all of them? And lastly, not long after the smartphone boom, tablet computing came on to the scene bringing with it a whole arena of screen sizes and resolutions that could possibly call for yet another version of a website. 

A better solution was needed. One that could do away with the need create multiple versions of a website, create forward-thinking flexibility no matter where the mobile computing industry leads, and put control back in the hands of our clients to deliver a rich experience for all of their users. Responsive Web Design was developed with these exact concepts in mind.

What is Responsive Web Design?

This is a fancy term that basically refers to a website that has been planned to “respond” to parameters of how it's being viewed. So, if you’re viewing a website on a large desktop monitor, you’ll see one form of the site that fits this viewing space. If you’re looking at the site on a mobile phone screen for example, the layout will adapt, sometimes even rearranging page elements, to optimize the experience for this smaller viewport.

A Responsive Design consists of:

• A fluid grid system of page elements that can be rearranged depending on available view space
• Platform agnostic - no matter what brand of device you own, the site will render properly
• Flexible rich elements like imagery and simple animations
• Optimization for touch screens

The importance of Responsive Web Design cannot be overstated. As of 2013, it has been reported that 55% of Americans say they’ve used a mobile device to access the internet and a whopping 31% say this is the primary way they access the internet. These numbers are predicted to climb indefinitely as smartphone and tablet devices become more accessible to people with a wider range of incomes. The user has more control than ever of how they consume content. Responsive Web Design meets the challenge like no other solution to give users what they want. If your website can’t deliver an optimal experience, users may quickly move on.

If you’d like to know more about how to take your site Responsive, we’d love to talk to you about your interactive challenges and find a custom solution that keeps you future-ready.

Contact us today.