You can get whiplash from following web technology recommendations these days. So, let me try to simplify it a little.
In a nutshell, the concept is the same. We, as consumers, use a myriad of devices these days to get the information we seek — mobile phones of a million varieties, tablets, laptops, desktops, even digital TV.
So, as a service who wishes to be found at the moment a customer goes seeking, you want to be available on every device, right? Absolutely. We agree completely.
The solution until recently has been to create a separate mobile version of your website. One that’s simplified and designed to be viewed on a mobile phone. The only problem is that statistics are showing that people don’t like to use the mobile version of a site, because they are so simplified. They often don’t include all the same features and information. I, for one, experienced this recently first hand. I was trying to get some information from the MVA (Motor Vehicle Administration) site on my mobile phone. But the mobile app didn’t include the information I was looking for. I had to go to the full site and then couldn’t read anything because the type was too small.
The answer is responsive design — a website that changes its layout to accommodate the device on which its being viewed. Nothing is simplified or taken out. All the information is still available. It’s just positioned a little differently to accommodate the device parameters.
If you spent money creating a mobile version of your site, you might be annoyed by this. But the truth is, responsive design was only made possible by experimenting with mobile design. It’s by using it and interfacing with other consumers using it that we learned to expand the use of technology into new areas. Technology helps us create better (and cheaper) websites all the time. It wasn’t that long ago when developing a website cost five times what it does now.
Some responsive design examples.
We’ve done a number of sites that utilize responsive design recently, and the results have been outstanding. Take a look:
http://www.continentalcontractors.com
http://coordinatedresponse.com
You can see the responsiveness by either actually viewing the site on multiple devices or by dragging the bottom right corner of your browser window in and out to see how it responds. Oooooo. So cool.
— Chris Quinn, principal and brand strategist
Photo by Jeremy Keith via Wikimedia Commons
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