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Welcome to the Rediscover Your Brand™ podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick! Last week we decided to talk about microsites and how they can benefit your brand. Well I decided that for this week I want to keep that Internet focus going, I know we drifted away for a couple weeks and focus on topics that were appropriate for the time. Now I want keep the internet focus going this week. When deciding on a topic to cover, I wanted a topic that is relevant to today’s standards and something that will be beneficial for all of your organizations. So I figured that talking about the mobile internet world would be an appropriate topic to cover. However we have already someone covered this topic but since it is pretty big and there are new aspects to it every day, it is even more appropriate to keep covering it. So today we are going to discuss Dedicated Mobile Sites VS Responsive Web Design. We will cover what both, Dedicated Mobile Sites and Responsive Web Design, are, we will also cover the benefits of both, and I’ll give you some inside tips when it is appropriate to use one or the other. Now like I said last week, I will provide you will insight, tips, and advice on Dedicated Mobile Sites and Responsive Web Design, but I am going to leave that door open for you to choose which one is best for your organization and your brand.
To start Dedicated Mobile Sites are a way of designing for the web that is strictly for mobile web browsers. Dedicated mobile sites are simplified versions of your main website, this means they present a similar look and feel but are completely different from your main website. Dedicated Mobile sites are designed strictly for mobile web browsers, providing an experience that is comfortable to use and not frustrating, such as sites that are not dedicated or responsive which apply extra effort of pinching pulling and zooming to view content.
Now to move on lets discuss what Responsive Web Design is. Responsive Web Design is a new advance in the web design world. Responsive Web Design is also referred to as RWD, so if I say RWD you will know what I am talking about. So RWD is a pretty interest concept. It basically is a way of designing for that web that allows you to just design one single site that will adjust its size and visibility to the screen it is being displayed on. This is connected to mobile because the site will reformat its self for any web-capable device.
Now both of these concepts present different point of views of how a site will be viewed on a mobile device but have similar concepts, which are to provide websites to mobile users in an appropriate manner.
So since we have established what both Dedicated Sites and RWD are, let’s get into the fun stuff and talk about the pros and cons for both. This part is going to be really fun because just like every other podcast the most important piece of information I want you to get out of this whole podcast is, know your target audience and know what they are looking from you!
Now in this podcast, you might be wondering why I am always starting with dedicated mobile sites instead of responsive, and it is not because Dedicated came first or one is more important than the other, I am simply just going in alphabetical order to make it simple and interesting at the same time.
Dedicated mobile sites are a method of designing firmly for the mobile web. Dedicated mobile sites display a user interface that is suitably demonstrated for a mobile device. These sites are usually not as large as your regular website and cannot enclose as much content as a desktop site. Many organizations get unenthusiastic about dedicated mobile sites when they find out their content gets narrowed; however, these are actually really wonderful for microsites. At times your target audience will agree with your decision for a dedicated mobile site because it will offer just amount of information they are looking for.
Now on the other side of the situation, responsive web design (RWD) is the latest, ground-breaking, means for designing not only for the mobile web; it is also for the desktop web. RWD is a way of designing for the web that manufactures a website on a flexible grid pattern and allows the site to regulate its size properly, to the screen size it is being shown on. With RWD organizations only have to construct and uphold a single website across all web-capable platforms, RWD also permits your audience to acquire their experience everywhere they go. On the advantage, RWD will not limit any of your organization’s contemporary web content. With the shortcoming, RWD carries all that large content across all platforms, making load times considerably time-consuming compared to dedicated mobile sites. Sites assembled on the RWD platform will provide an astonishing user interfaces, along with the unchanged, superlative user experiences, across all web-capable platforms.
Knowing your target audience and applying what they would like to see from you to your brand, is the best way you will find out which platform will have that perfect fit with your organization’s mobile presence. There are assortments of benefits you will achieve from either Responsive Web Design (RWD) or Dedicated Mobile Sites, and I could talk about them all day, but I am not because I want you to experience them for yourself.
That’s it for episode 40 of the Rediscover Your Brand™ podcast! I’m your host Mike McCormick, and this has been brought to you by ArtVersion Interactive Agency. You May contact us on Facebook at Facebook.com/Artversion, on Twitter at Twitter.com/Artversion, and at Artversion.com. Thanks for Listening!