Your visitors need to be able to use your website with ease, regardless of the device they are visiting on. Enter responsive design.
The use of the Web has vastly diversified the past few years. We now browse the Web behind our desks, on the couch and in public transit.
Some websites are of such a business-like nature that 90% of visitors will be visiting using a traditional computer. If however you want to offer each and every visitor a pleasant experience, then a responsive design for your website is key. Such a design will not only leave a good impression on every device, but also ensure a pleasant user experience.
Often responsive design is approached a bit too simplistic: A base design is made for the dominant use case (a desktop computer for example), after which the design is quickly translated to different screen sizes. In some cases this will suffice, however the question to ask yourself is this:
What is the visitor looking for, given the fact that he’s visiting using this device?
For example, your website is visited using a smart phone, while typically, your website is meant for use cases where the visitor is using a laptop. Why is your visitor coming in through a smart phone? Probably they are in transit, visiting your site to quickly look up your office address.
If all you did was shrink the layout of your site to fit properly on a mobile screen, then you still haven’t done this visitor any real favor.
Aside from the visitor’s intentions, other circumstances are important to consider. Take for example the visitor’s current internet connection. If your responsive design doesn’t take limited bandwidth into account, you may be serving unreasonable amounts of data such as large, high resolution logos and photos. Your page may not even finish loading before the visitor’s patience runs out. By implementing responsive design the right way, these things are avoided.
Are you ready to serve every user with an optimised experience?