If you have a website for your business or organization you need a responsive design!

So Just What Is Responsive Web Design?

First, let's define responsive web design. According to Wikipedia... "Responsive Web Design (RWD) is a Web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling across a wide range of devices."

The Advantages of Responsive Web Design

Responsive design allows one URL and a single content source to serve multiple devices including smartphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops, desktops and even bigger monitors like large screen TV's. Responsive design requires HTML5 and CSS3  to handle media queries. Media queries allow code to determine the monitor resolution that someone is viewing the website in. Unique media queries are be set for smartphones, for tablets, and larger monitor sizes.

With new devices of varying screen resolution continually being launched into the marketplace it's essential that web design adapts to multiple screen sizes. When you have a responsive web design the site looks great no matter what device you are using including e-readers.

Responsive design utilizes a flexible grid system with flexible images. The CSS code uses media queries to make the web design adjust depending on the monitor resolution.

All modern browsers support CSS3 media queries including Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera Mini, Android, Symbian, and Blackberry.

And responsive design presents many advantages over a non-responsive design platform. Responsive design can save you time and money because you only have to design and maintain one website vs. a desktop website and an additional mobile friendly website and / or mobile application.

When you build in responsive web design you are also "future proofing" your website. Build a responsive website design now, especially on top of a content management system platform. and you probably won't have to rebuild your website from scratch for a long time.

Google, Yahoo & BING Love Responsive Websites!

Google and BING have also made it very clear that they like responsive web design and this often results in improved SEO and search engine visibility. Having multiple websites with similar content can result in Google penalizing website for duplicate content. Plus the major search engines are all about rewarding websites that deliver a great user experience. And responsive websites that are built well offer that.

To quote Google "we recommend webmasters follow the industry best practice of using web design, namely serving the same HTML for all devices using media queries to decide rendering on each device".

So Why Wouldn't You Use Responsive Web Design?

If that doesn't convince you that your next website needs to be responsive what more information do you need? It makes good sense because it results in a great user experience which Google loves and that makes a lot of cents.

Filed in // Websites, Content Management Systems, Mobile Website Development