Responsive web design is the ability to have your website scale to fit whatever devices your end user is viewing it on, whether that is a computer, tablet or mobile phone. The idea seems easy enough and probably something you assumed your website may have done already, but in reality it’s a relatively new and beneficial type of design. You see, in the recent past a web designer would design and create a regular website. They would then have to take that design concept and create a whole separate mobile website. The ability to create one responsive website not only helps the visual appeal of your site, but also helps improve your Search Engine Optimization as well as possibly extending your websites shelf-life.

With responsive design as the user switches from their laptop to tablet, to mobile device the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. In other words, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the user’s preferences. This would eliminate the need for a different design and development phase for each new gadget that comes on the market. So after seeing how in just a few short years devices like tablets and smart phones have taken over web browsing and forced businesses to adapt their websites into mobile versions, being able to stay ahead of the tech curve can be very cost effective. It’s difficult to say what the next new hot tech-device will be, but with Responsive Design you should already be prepared for whatever comes on the market.

As for helping your search engine optimization (Google ranking), that explanation is a little easier. Instead of having a separate URL for your mobile device, you will only need one. Right now most mobile website have their own URL. You might take notice of this on your smart phone when you see “m.” in front of the typical URL. For example you will see it as m.espn.go.com on your mobile device as opposed to www.espn.com on your computer. By keeping the URL the same across all platforms any traffic going to your website, whether it be computer, tablet or mobile will count towards your data. On top of that, responsive design will look better so it will help combat high bounce rate, it will enhance user experience and make it easier for Google to crawl and index your website. All great things when it comes to where you rank on Google.

Does all of this sound weird to you? Are you sitting there asking yourself what you just read for a few paragraphs? Well let me try to break this down as easy as possible so it becomes a little clearer.  What you probably thought your website already did or should have done when being viewed on something besides your computer can now actually be done…and it’s helpful to you. So if you’re interested in learning more about responsive design and how it can help your company website give us a call and we’ll explain further.