What is a responsive website?
If you’re a small business and you’ve heard the phrase ‘responsive design’, you might be wondering what this means for your website. In essence, responsive design is a website that is created to respond to different types of devices, depending on what the site is being viewed on. This is a site that can be viewed clearly by laptops, computers, mobile phones and tablets.
For any business with an online presence, having a responsive web design is essential. Internet searching on small screens such as mobile phones has already overtaken those done on a PC. Businesses must also factor in Google’s recent mobile-first index, where responsive sites will be favoured over those that are not. All businesses must have their eCommerce and social media pages readily available to view across all platforms. For help with making your site responsive, professional web designers in Reading, visit http://www.starwebinnovations.co.uk/
The end goal of responsive design is to have all your information on one site, but that information is easily transferable when viewed on devices with different screen sizes. For example, a fixed site might display some columns of information but when viewed on a mobile phone, it might be awkward to scroll, and some details might be hidden from view, giving a pretty awful user experience.
When a site uses responsive design, smaller screens versions can adapt to maybe show the columns differently but just as clearly. This makes the information easy to read and navigate for all users. Images get resized and nothing is missing from view.
Other issues that must be considered when designing for mobiles or tablets is the mouse versus touch screen factor. What might be easy to click onto with a mouse could prove difficult when you need to select a tiny part of a screen with your finger. Therefore, the element of touch must be considered when designing a responsive site.
Other influencing factors include download speed and graphics. A lot of graphics can take longer to load on a mobile phone, so designing for mobile might involve using less graphics than for desktop viewers.
Small businesses in particular must keep up to speed with the latest developments online in order to remain competitive. More people than ever before are conducting business and doing their shopping online on small, portable screens than ever before. Take a look at your site traffic and you’ll be amazed at how many users are arriving via mobile devices. You can even find out which specific devices are being used to visit your site.
