One of the most frequent questions we get asked is about responsive designs. Let me restate that: One of the most requested styles we get is responsive design. However, more often than not the request is because someone has heard of the term but really doesn’t have any idea what it is other than “It’s something that a designer told me every website needs!” That’s basically the same thing as a car dealer telling you that you NEED power leather heated seats in every vehicle you buy…including your work trucks.
What exactly is Responsive Design?
The term Responsive Design refers to any design that can change based on a set of circumstances. In web design, this means that the design is coded so that it changes based upon the screen size it is on. A Responsive Design will normally be written for a specific device, say a standard PC or laptop monitor, and then coded to change it’s font sizes and physical positions of it’s various elements when displayed on a smaller screen such as a tablet or mobile browser.
That sounds good, why don’t we do that?
In theory, this is great! Your site can keep it’s styling, colors and art work across multiple devices. You can keep a moderately consistent look no matter where you clients are viewing your data from. On the surface, this does sound like something that everyone would want to incorporate into their sites.
However, let’s say your business is a service business. In this case, you might actually want a different look for your mobile site than your desktop site. Your customers who hit your site via mobile devices are significantly more likely to be in an emergency situation where they are trying to reach you rather than in a situation where they are researching your services. Your conversion rates for your mobile site will rise if you were to present your phone number and other methods of contact and scheduling above the fold on your first page. Your PC designed site, however, converts better by presenting useful information and video training.
Under a responsive site you would default to showing the same information across all devices. Yes, you can use custom coding to selectively display information based on device but at that point you’ve spent the resources to design a responsive site…and then spent the resources you would have spent on a traditional PC + Mobile site setup…you have paid for your website twice. It’s clear in some situations it’s more efficient to use the traditional two design approach.
Then there’s the fact that a responsive design takes longer to correctly implement. It already is a time consuming process to ensure that a normal non-responsive design looks and functions correctly across all the major PC browsers. You then add the additional time it takes to write code for and to test across the various resolutions and browsers for mobile devices as well. Plan on implementing video on your homepage? Expect 30-50% of mobile browsers to not be able to handle that. You either have to write detection code for those device/browser combinations and hide/substitute for the video or hope that the browser displays something tasteful that doesn’t break your design.
So, what does this mean for my site?
So, now that you know what Responsive Design actually is you have a better idea if it is actually right for your site. If you still are unsure, this is the point you talk to your designer (or if you don’t have a designer, talk to us!) about your specific needs. A good designer will find out about you and your business then find out exactly what you want your site to acutally do for you and then work with your to create a design that not only looks good, but also does exactly what you want it to do.
What are your experiences with Responsive Designs? Share with us in the comments below!