Responsive Web Design Is The Solution For Marketers & Designers Alike

By Author: Yule Green
Total Articles: 8
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Even as the so-called "smartphone revolution" enters its sixth year, many web designers remain so caught off guard by the proliferation of so many mobile devices that they remain unsure how to best cater to these small screens that are dominating the marketplace. For the past several years, many web designers have focused their efforts to making the "mobile version" of a website as a way to bring mobile device users into the fold and present them with a website's content. While not necessarily a bad choice, this actually isn't the ideal way to cater to the smaller screen. Instead, designers should be adopting and promoting responsive web design that can actually adapt on-the-fly to new screen sizes and display resolutions.

Responsive Design: Automatically Adapting a Website's Content On the Go

Responsive design is so named because it actually "responds" to the size and scale of the screen being used to read a website's content. This type of design utilizes CSS3 and HTML5 web design philosophies to adapt to each screen size in a unique way. When a laptop or desktop computer is being used, the site displays at its ...
... full width; that means that sidebars are visible and usable, and the site is generally appropriately sized for screens at least 11 inches wide.

On mobile devices, however, responsive design actually shifts its presentation to meet the demands of each individual device. Tablet devices, which typically range in screen size from 6 to 9 inches, are treated as smaller desktops. That typically means a smaller sidebar that is still usable and visible, but defers more to the main column of content. On mobile devices, with screens typically between 3 and 5 inches, responsive web design is smart enough to know that the sidebar must be eliminated. Instead, it creates the traditional single-column design and fills it with the site's main content. The sidebar is ignored in favor of small-screen usability.

How Responding to Screen Resolutions Improves Search Engine Optimization

If the "adapts to screen size" argument isn't resonating with a web designer's clients, perhaps this one will: Responsive design serves to increase a website's rankings on major search engines like Google. The reason why is actually pretty simple in most cases. A "mobile version" of the website is typically located in a subfolder or subdomain, and links on that page must be rerouted accordingly, there is no such requirement when implementing responsive design.

Instead of being placed into a subdirectory, a single responsive design is created within the site's same CSS sheets for users of all devices. Google is then able to better index the site and track its traffic, as it does not have to constantly monitor both the site's top-level domain and any mobile-targeted subdomains. It also saves Google a little time and energy, as its crawling "bots" by only having to index one site's content rather than multiple sites that cater to each kind of device or screen size.

Online Resources Make Responsive Web Design Easy to Learn

There was a time when learning new theories of web design and development required picking up a book at the local bookstore and reading about how "Dummies" would deploy a new design tactic. That's still possible, but it's been effectively superseded by a number of online resources like Lynda.com and TeamTreehouse. These websites actually specialize in educating their visitors on basic web design skills, like CSS3 and HTML5 web design, and more specific approaches, like responsive web design.

These websites, combined with the stripped-down responsive web design frameworks employed by most designers, will serve as the key ways to learn about responsive websites and how to deploy them. And, once it has become apparent how to create and deploy such a design, it will become even easier to convince clients that their site needs to respond to new screen sizes on-the-fly, rather than create a separate site for smartphone and tablet device users.

The Future is in RWD

There is really no turning back from the RWD ethos. Mobile devices are here to stay, and screen sizes will continue to diversify as more of a website's readers enjoy content on the go. At the same time, search engine optimization continues to increase in importance for websites that want to gain a major competitive edge. Thee two interests have aligned in the form of responsive design, and it's unlikely that there will be any way to avoid this phenomenon in the future. Early adoption means better rankings and more intuitive user experiences, and web design clients should certainly be open to those two things, even if just on principle.

Peter Marino is the SEO and Content Marketing Expert at SheffieldMediaGroup.com. However, he still keeps up to date and practices the latest web design technologies and techniques.He can be followed on Twitter @TweetsforSMG and on Pinterest.Visit http://www.sheffieldmediagroup.com/services/web-design-westchester/ for more information.