ShareAs soon as the world found itself to be inundated with a plethora of ever-growing digital media devices such as smart-phones, tablets and kindles, companies realised that their websites needed to look good and work correctly whether being viewed in portrait or landscape, on a 3-inch screen or 16-inch laptop.
Why does it matter?
Huge amounts of time, money and effort are spent on creating attractive, useable websites that reflect the company, the brand and the services or products to their best advantage. Sales funnels are set up, with a view to driving enquiries or sales or some other action such as social sharing. But what happens when your potential customer views your website on their iPhone or tablet? Does it still look good? Is it still easy for them to navigate your website, read your information and to take some kind of action (such as ‘Buy Now’) or ‘Share on Facebook’?
Just take your website’s main menu bar as an example. When viewed on a smart-phone how small to the menu options become, and how easy are they to select with your finger, without selecting about three options all at once? If a significant proportion of your users are viewing your website on their smaller devices then this is a problem that cannot be ignored.
What is ‘responsive web design’?
Sometimes simply referred to as ‘flexible design’, ‘responsive web design’ is phrase coined by Ethan Marcotte, and is essentially a way to solve the problem of optimising websites for use on multiple devices . The main principle of this is to make everything flexible using design/coding techniques such as fluid grids, flexible images and media queries.
Do I really need a ‘responsive’ website design?
By looking at Google Analytics you can see what percentage of your users are already using different devices to view your website. Keep in mind though that even if it’s a small percentage, it is most likely a growing number. That’s why we like responsive design – it ‘future-proofs’ your website for when more and more of your users view your site on an ever-growing range of different devices.
To find out whether you could benefit from responsive web design, contact us today on Haslemere 01428 788170.
Recent projects incorporating responsive design:
Melanie Downing »
Jellybean Pottery »
