One of the most game-changing trends in the Internet marketing industry has been responsive web design. This web design approach builds a website so that it adapts to the platform and device that the visitor is using. For instance, a visitor using an iPhone will be presented with an iPhone optimized browsing experience. If that same visitor switches to a tablet, he will be presented with a website that’s optimized for tablets.
How Responsive Websites Are Changing the Industry
The rise of responsive design couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. More people are using mobile devices to browse the Internet than ever. Companies typically used mobile websites to offer a positive user experience for mobile users. While mobile websites accomplished the job in offering a mobile-optimized web experience, it came with many limitations.
Companies had to invest in SEO and content for both their mobile and desktop websites. This meant that they had to allocate a significant amount of money and resources to make sure they were serving mobile users. Having two websites also created a disconnect in their marketing campaigns. For instance, a branding campaign that’s promoting a company’s website would be ineffective if a mobile user visited a desktop website. Promoting two different sites in one ad would also confuse many prospects.
The Immense Benefits of Responsive Design
With responsive web design, you provide the best user experience for all platforms with one website. Because you’re using one site, you don’t have to expand your budget for a separate mobile site. Your marketing is also more congruent and you don’t have to worry about marketing your website in channels that have a mix of both desktop and mobile users like social media.
Responsive design also allows you to deliver the optimal user experience for all types of platforms and devices. You can provide an optimized site for tablet devices of different screen sizes. A responsive website will be able to adapt to far more formats than the average mobile website ever could.
Not Without Its Downsides
That doesn’t mean that responsive desktop design is not without its problems. Responsive websites require visitors to download all of the site’s regular HTML markup, javascript and CSS to view the site. That means that the loading time can be quite long. There needs to be a lot of fine-tuning and adjustments made to optimize these sites for speed.
There is also a lot of development time and cost for these types of sites. Bigger sites can expect to spend a considerable amount of money to make sure their site is fully responsive. On the brighter side, most websites that switch to a responsive design end up saving more money when compared to mobile websites.
Popular Responsive Design Trends
Many companies are starting to understand that they have to make use of UI/UX design. That’s why they are focusing on improving the user interface and user experience of their responsive websites. The goal is designed for clean navigation, organized infrastructure, fast loading and minimal distractions.
Some companies are also focusing on their most popular pages and redoing image optimization so that their pages load fast on mobile devices. Typically, most responsive sites use the standard desktop files and resize everything to fit the platform and device being used. This approach has lead to the biggest complaint of responsive sites, which is a slow load time.
Conclusion
Responsive web design has completely changed the web. Companies can now integrate their marketing campaigns and provide a positive user experience no matter what platform or device is being used. While the technology isn’t perfect, there is an immense amount of potential with responsive design. The design community is in agreement that innovations for responsive design are just around the corner.