What is a responsive website?

If you’re a website owner or someone in the market for one, you have probably heard the term “responsive”. If you’re wondering what this means and why all web developers say it’s so important, you’re in the right spot.

Responsive Web Design (RWD) is all about making each aspect of a website look great on any platform. This means that a website that looks awesome in a laptop browser  will also look great on a cell phone.

Each day, more of the internet’s traffic originates from smartphones and tablets. Making sure that each of your visitors have a great experience while on your website is imperative. We have all visited a website on a small screen device, only to find that it wasn’t responsive and in turn was very difficult to navigate. How long do you think a visitor will stick around in that situation?

First of all, there is the speed issue. A website not designed for responsive/mobile viewing could take so long to load that the visitor decides to move on to other websites. In fact, according to kissmetrics.com, 47% of consumers expect a website to load in under 2 seconds. While 40% will simply leave if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. By designing with mobile viewing in mind, we can make a website load nearly instantly.

Ease of use is another factor to consider when designing a website. We call this UX Design, which is short for User Experience Design. A modern website design should start out with the end user in mind. By building for a mobile screen first and then adapting it to a traditional desktop environment, we can make sure that one site works efficiently for everyone. We routinely test our websites with non-technical users to study their habits and use that information to better the design. As an example, we know that most people expect that clicking on a website’s logo will bring them back to the homepage.

So there you have it. You now know that a responsive website design simply means that it is optimized for every size screen. If you have any further questions about this topic, or anything else related to website design, feel free to email us at questions@conviennet.com or comment below.