Practically speaking, responsive design is one of the biggest buzzwords of the 21st century. Smart marketers, technology vendors and others are all talking about the need for responsive design. But what does this mean?
Responsive design means that a web site is crafted to be able to show up well, and be user-friendly, in different platforms and environments.
A Diverse Landscape
Not too many years ago, it used to be that almost everyone accessing a web site was sitting at a desktop or laptop computer. The interface was always mostly the same — a 20-inch monitor, a full keyboard and an overall, straightforward way to get on the web. Enter the smart phone — now, a huge amount of web traffic is done over smart phones and mobile devices, which leads to some pretty severe problems with the user-friendliness of web sites. Smartphone users encounter displays that run off the side or bottom of the screen, menu buttons that are nearly impossible to find, and all kinds of other problems related to the underlying HTML source code, which is too often still built for a desktop or laptop interface.
Designing a Responsive Site
Today’s top IT professionals know how to create a site so that it looks good on both a laptop or desktop environment, and a smart phone interface. This involves making specific changes to source code design, so that everything you need is there on your smartphone screen, and you can navigate a site, use controls, or utilize functions like ‘search’ without annoying crashes or other problems. In some ways, responsive design is also like old-fashioned print page layout. No matter whether it’s a newsletter, a landing page, or a set of slides, being responsive means everything fits, that all of the great visuals and great content that everyone put so much work into is there for users to see. Responsive design takes more work, but it pays huge dividends. That vast number of consumers using smart phones means more people are going to gravitate toward user-friendly sites that offer them all of the functionality of the site on any screen. Companies that are virtually unusable through a mobile interface are going to be left in the dust.
Comprehensive Web Services from WebSubstance
At WebSubstance, our teams provide top-to-bottom, full scale web design, and more. We handle responsive design issues, along with all other aspects of planning a sharp-looking and useful site. Along with all of these ‘nuts and bolts’, we deal with registry and DNS issues, while also helping with visual design extras like photography, and search engine optimization. We’re a one-stop shop for not just getting up a web site, but designing and crafting a web site that will truly boost visibility for your brand, and help you grow your business. We are assisting our clients in looking forward to the days where web projects are built for diverse interfaces, and accessed from anywhere, not just from behind a desk.
