Q: What is “Responsive” Web Design?
Responsive Web Design (RWD) is the latest and most commonly used web design method in the industry aimed to provide an optimal viewing experience by responding to the users’ behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. Responsively built websites immediately adapt to their own environment to allow for easy reading and navigation, as well as require minimal resizing, panning, and scrolling.
In an age with such a wide variety of devices and screen sizes, from desktop monitors to mobile phones and tablets, LaunchDM recognizes the importance in designing and building websites with a technology that will be used for decades to come.
Q: How do I know if my website is responsive?
There are several ways to tell if your website is built responsively, however, the easiest way is to drag the bottom edge of your browser window left or right to see how the visual elements respond to the changing size. In doing so, if the site you are testing seems to change appearance in “response” to the web browser window changing size, your site is most likely responsive.
If you’re not sure or if you would like to view a test example, view a demonstration of the LaunchDM responsive website.
Q: Why is responsive design important to your company?
In 2014, the average website received somewhere between 30-60% of its total traffic from mobile devices – a number that seems to increase by the day! The previous solution for mobile traffic was to provide visitors with a great web experience using two websites: one desktop and one mobile. However, this was limiting to mobile visitors and time consuming for the company having to manage content for both a desktop and mobile version of their website.
Responsive websites have simplified the process by providing companies with quick and easy management and optimum viewing on any device all on one website. Any changes that need to be made can be done all in one place and in turn, all changes will reflect on all devices as opposed to having to make changes in two places.
Another added benefit of having a responsive (mobile-friendly) site is the value that search engines put on the rankings of websites. Google recommends RWD as the best way to target mobile users. The popular search engine shows this by choosing a lot of RWD sites in their search results. Designing and developing a responsive website not only makes the day-to-day management easier, but it also reduces the overall cost to built a website since the site only needs to be built and search engine optimized one time.
