Utilizing Responsive Web Design for Business
The art of responsive web design
It all started in late 2002 when the first responsive design website was launched by Audi.de. Back then it was a matter of flexing 3 types of screen resolution: 640x480 (small), 800x600 (medium), and 1024x768 (large). Amazed with the concept of page layout flexibility, Jim Holback wrote an article:
“With an increase of alternative browsing devises on the horizon, such as WebTV, public access kiosks, video gaming systems, e-Books, small handheld devices, and other nonstandard applications, the continuum of viewable browsing sizes will only expand. Never before has the demand for flexibility been greater. Solutions developed on the Web now will affect and inform future design.”
Seemingly predicting the future, it was in May 2010 that Ethan Marcotte coined the term, responsive web design. The philosophy behind it came from John Allsopp’s “A Dao of Web Design” where John talked about designing for the ebb and flow of things, which made a big impact for Ethan. From there he started to fix width interface but he knew it wasn’t enough.
In one of Marcotte’s interview with Creative Blog staff in June 2014, he narrated:
“For a long time, fluid layouts were a nice-sounding theory, rather than something I’d be comfortable using on client projects. As a designer, there’s nothing worse than maximising a window on a huge monitor and seeing uncomfortably long lines of text. It wasn’t until media queries began gaining some traction, I started to realise you could have the fluidity and also preserve a little bit of control over it. You do need a middle ground between absolute fluidity and the strictures of print. If there’s a need for a more device-specific experience for your audience, if the research is there, if the demand is there, that’s where you start your work. You don’t need to try and make everything responsive. My goal is, irrespective of technique, to make the web as accessible as possible and as beautiful as possible for the people who are trying to access it.”
The idea here is that, responsive web design is essential for taking your business online as the majority of the users nowadays since 2017 has preferred mobile devices to be their primary viewing device as compared to desktop. As shown on the statistic done by stat counter global stats, in the past 12 months, mobile devices still dominate website traffic. Just imagine a liquid being poured to different size and shape of a container and still holding the same content — the same concept with how responsive web design should be. Whether the user is using a mobile device or a desktop, the ease for user experience should still be great.
Responsive web design benefits for business
We have already tackled what RWB is and how it works. With the statistic provided above on how mobile devices dominates the web traffic nowadays, indeed RWB will help businesses in many ways in view of the fact that it adapts to the current trend. Below are the 5 advantages for having RWD included in your package when availing web design or web development after choosing the right agency that will cater your needs.
- Saves you a penny.
Opting to responsive web design allows you to save money by cross-cutting the expenses for website design and web development. The need to hire the expertise of a mobile developer and a static developer is not essentially necessary as it can already be optimised in just one go. RWB only requires one site to manage or maintain the specific site and voila! a single fix in a site will overhaul everything even with a different platform view.
- Easy on-site maintenance
It may sound contrast to my first bullet point as RWB may be expensive at first, albeit looking at it in a great length, it will not just save you money but it will also save you time. Way back when desktop still dominates the web traffic and uses static development we normally key in:
http://www.domain.com/whatever-in-here
and when we used our mobile devices, we see in the address bar
http://m.domain.com/whatever-in-here
From the given example we need to maintain 2 sites in order to produce a good outcome both in mobile and desktop versions. With responsive web design, we will only be taking one site which is: http://www.domain.com/whatever-in-here, in order to maintain it. Remember having a consistent URL structure is important not just for seamless user experience but also to help your visibility in Google search.
- Exceptional user experience
Seamless user experience or UX has been made possible through CSS media queries as long as effective UX writing rules is also observed. Cascading Style Sheet is a language that changed the game of how a website is displayed with the help of media queries as it allows different design layouts in relation to certain media types. Having media queries as the central component of responsive web design, it paved the way for CSS to have a max-width property to display content that will automatically adjust the width and the orientation of the viewing device in a user’s browser.
- Brings more traffic to your site.
With impeccable UX, mobile device users’ favour to stay longer on your website. Having a smooth interaction with your site like how it is done when they are using the desktop is more likely to have an increase with your site traffic, in the same manner with profit gain. It is like allowing your visitors to easily pick-up where they last left off. If it turns out different from what they have last encountered then you may lose one potential client for your business.
- Google search increase visibility
Who doesn’t want to rank on the first page, right? For this, Google bots love responsive web design due to the fact that it serves the same set of sites in different viewing platform without compromising the look of its content. It’s like making your site pro-user. Sharing a link despite what viewing platform the visitor is using, should be easily done without altering the web address to fit on the device your customer is using. The more visitor that is driven to your site, the higher chance your business to be visible in Google search.
The parting shot
As handheld devices continue to develop, responsive web design is a must to ensure UX importance in the same manner that it continually adapt to the current trend. It is not perfect in the time being, for the reason that a lot of things to factor in during RWB. You’ve got the OS, web browsers, size of the device screen, the density of pixels and the process of converting static design of website to being responsive. Nevertheless, it’s a must for every business to have RWB part of their manoeuvre, for the reason that this brings cost reduction, easy maintenance, more traffic to your website and with exceptional user experience, it may lead to more profit gains.
When in search of a web development company or a responsive web design agency, make sure that they do cater RWB in their package, and will instruct you afterwards on how to maintain website design. Remember that what you’re paying for should equally satisfy your potential clients to produce profit gain and put your lead ahead of your competitors.