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People use tablets and smartphones for different purposes. 90% of people use multiple screens sequentially. 81% of people browse the Internet, 67% Shop online, 46% manage finances, and 43% plan vacations.
Now how will you engage users on so many screens? The answer is "Responsive Design."
{getToc} $title={Table of Contents}What Is Responsive Design?
Responsive design is a write once, run everywhere type of web design, rather than building separate sites or expensive apps and spending too much money and resources. In responsive design, each element fluidly adapts to every screen size.
Now think of the time you were browsing the Internet on your phone, and you stumbled upon a website where the text was too small, and the images didn't entirely load properly.
Were you satisfied with the experience? The answer is most likely no, and you are not alone in this regard. Nowadays, there are millions of websites available to the public, but some have adapted to the new reality of mobile device internet browsers.
We're talking about responsive website design. Responsive web design is a technique whereby the developers code a website so that no matter what device is accessing the user experience remains completely intact. The site will appear just by selling Utley on the smartphone or tablet as it will on a desktop or laptop computer.
Think of it like a rubber layout or a fluid grid of your company's website. The website designer assigns the proportions and dimensions of your site's various elements to a certain percentage. These specific percentages apply to all aspects of the site, including images, columns, and even text boxes because of the predetermined percentile values embedded into the code. The layout of the responsive website will automatically adjust to fit the length width and also the screen on the device of someone who is accessing it.
Benefits of Responsive Website Design
In the following ways, designers, developers, businesses, and, most importantly, users got the benefits of Responsive website design.
Traffic
October 2016 marks a turning point in the evolution of the Internet through the race. It's been very close for some time, but it was this month with total global Internet traffic on smartphones surpassed the amount of traffic from desktop computers. Here's some perspective eight years ago, almost a hundred percent of online traffic came from desktop computers; the trend gradually changed over time, but the industry as a whole was affected.
Enhance Online Browsing Experience
Initial introductions are everything, so whether somebody is visiting a site from a desktop or mobile phone, you need them to have a reliably positive encounter. On the off chance that users do a lot of zooming, contracting, and squeezing their screens during their first visit, they're probably going to surrender and attempt another site.
More Conversion Rates
Bringing down your bounce rate is just half of the fight. Developing a similar experience across all devices is essential for getting new users. When a user decides to pay or not for a service, they don't desire to be redirected to device-dependent websites because this process usually takes longer. A single, secure website that looks professional on all devices makes users less likely to get frustrated or turn to a loss in conversion rate.
Lower Development Cost
Developing a responsive website needs considerably less time than developing a stand-alone mobile application and a regular desktop website. As time is money, responsive design generally costs less than the alternative. Still, if the initial investment of a responsively designed website does end up reaching out to be more expensive than creating two separate sites, you'll end up saving in the long run because of maintenance costs, individual configuration costs, etc.
Lower Maintenance Needs
Managing two different websites requires additional testing and support. The process of responsive design uses standardized testing methodologies to ensure the optimal layout. Owning a separate desktop and mobile site also requires two content approaches, two managing interfaces, and possibly two design teams. Responsive design's "one size fits all" approach means less pain for developers, business owners, and consumers. Wasting less time on maintenance frees up time to focus on more critical things like marketing and content creation.
Faster Pages
Mobile device users have small attention spans. Researches prove that mobile user tends to abandon web pages that take longer than three seconds to load completely. If your website is not optimized for tablets and smartphones, it will also take more time to load, which can disappoint customers, they will not return. Always keep in mind that your responsive site uses modern performance techniques such as caching, and a responsive image display will help improve your web page loading speed.
Reduce Bounce Rates
If your website is a responsive and optimized mobile site, it provides a much better user experience for the visitor. Hence, it is much more likely that they'll stick around for a longer time and explore different areas of your site. On the other hand, if your website isn't responsive, it is much harder to keep visitors engaged and, therefore, more likely to bounce.
Reporting Becomes Easier
Understanding where traffic is coming from and how users are interacting with your website is necessary to make the required improvements. Maintaining various versions of a website needs developers to track users' journeys through multiple conversion paths, funnels, and redirects. But a single responsive site considerably simplifies the monitoring process. Maybe you used Google Analytics and other related tools to provide responsive websites by summarizing tracking and analytics into a separate report so that you can see how your content is performing on different devices.
Improve Search Engine Visibility
Responsive website design is essential to search engine optimization as quality content. High authority backlinks and better bounce rates translate into more top search rankings, but there's an extra SEO benefit for mobile-optimized sites. Having one responsive website rather than separate desktop and mobile versions avoids the issue of duplicate content, which can negatively impact your search ranking.
Improve Offline Browsing Experience
Responsive website design provides site owners to deliver quality content to viewers across all devices; the offline browsing abilities of HTML5 mean that websites can be quickly accessed ‘on the go.’ As HTML5 allowed tablets and smartphones to increase, this will become more important. Email newsletters and content included in hybrid HTML5 web applications will frequently be consumed on the move and in the absence of an internet connection.
Conclusion
With time, the number of devices in the market growing exponentially, and the study of responsive design will become more difficult. It's simple to understand that the benefits of responsive web design have all been hammered out; we are reasonably still in the field's infancy. Users are soon accessing the web through virtual reality headsets, and smartphones have enabled the creation of entirely new types of applications such as augmented reality games, so there will be no lack of new challenges going forward.
Coming concerns for developers will include decreasing maintenance costs, continuous search engine optimization, and enhanced conversion rates. Most new improvements in responsive design have concentrated on supporting smaller screens, and this trend has no signs of slowing down. Still, it's also vital not to forget users using larger displays, so everyone has a similar user experience.
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