Responsive Web Design and Development

This page on Responsive Web Design and Development covers the following topics:

• What is a Responsive Website?
• Should my website be responsive?
• Are Responsive Websites more expensive to build?
• We build Responsive Websites and Web Applications

What is a Responsive Website?

A Responsive Website is a website that works and resizes optimally across a variety of screens such as desktop monitors, computer tablets, and mobile phones.

Go ahead, try it now, this website is responsive. When resizing this website’s browser window on a desktop monitor you’ll see the text and other screen elements move and resize to suit their new surroundings and minimise horizontal scrolling. A similar effect can be seen on a computer tablet or mobile phone when switching between portrait and landscape modes.

Should my website be responsive?

The quick answer is “yes”. As shown in the following graph people are spending more time accessing the Internet from a mobile device than a desktop device. In particular, due to their portability, mobile devices are being favoured for recreational activities such as web browsing and Internet shopping.

A properly designed responsive website will perform well on a wide range of devices and a wide range of Internet browsers. For an organisation this translates to people spending more time on their websites and a resultant increase in sales.

Search engine ranking algorithms, across major search engines, also favour responsive websites. So the more responsive your organisation’s website is, the higher it will score against the “responsive” search engine ranking criteria pushing it closer to number one in the search engines rankings. Even a small increase in search engine ranking can translate to a large increase in sales .

Are Responsive Websites more expensive to build?

Overall, yes, a responsive website is more expensive to build as it needs to be designed for, and tested across, multiple devices. Generally the difference in cost is proportionally quite small, and as website responsiveness is crucial for usability the associated cost-benefit of developing a responsive website is high.

We build Responsive Websites and Web Applications

As demonstrated with this website, Atom Software builds highly usable responsive websites and web applications.

Contact us to talk about your business website or web application needs and how we can help you achieve your business goals.