Last year we posted a blog piece about Responsive Web Design (RWD) explaining what it is, if you want to take another look at that post click here.
At the end of the blog we predicted that Responsive or Adaptive web design would grow in popularity and now only just into the New Year ‘responsive’ is on everybody’s lips to be a big thing in 2013. So if you missed our previous post let’s take another look at RWD and see what the fuss is about!
Put simply Responsive Web Design is where a website is designed and built to respond to the screen size it is being viewed on. From a PC to a tablet or smartphone the design flows and responds to the device being used, adjusting the graphics and features to appear correctly. This means the user doesn’t have to scroll around or pinch and zoom – which often made it difficult to view or find content when using smaller devices.
After a bumper Christmas of tablet and smartphone sales coupled with the predicted demise of the PC, it’s now more apparent than ever to see that people view websites on a variety of devices and have an expectation that websites will work and appear correctly regardless of the device being used.
As an example, four products within Apple's range of iPad's and iPhone’s highlight the variety of screen sizes from only one brand; the original iPad has a 9.5 inch screen, the iPad Mini measures at 7.9 inches, the iPhone 5 has 4 inch display and the iPhone 4s has a 3.5 inch screen. This doesn't account for other popular handset and tablet manufacturers such as Samsung, Blackberry, Windows, Amazon, Google and Sony to name a few.
As the smartphone and tablet market continues to thrive it’s clear to see that more updates and product variations will enter the market; having a website that works across all of these devices should be a huge consideration for businesses this year. Whether or not this is developing a new website or updating an existing site RWD creates a far slicker user experience and it provides a better representation of your brand and products online; ultimately increasing the number of leads or sales your website generates.
There’s a lot of talk about RWD at the moment and there’s no doubt more websites will become responsive this year the big question is - when will yours?
Ascensor provide Web Design Leeds and London