If your website has a separate template for displaying on mobiles and does not respond to various screen sizes, then now is the time to consider a revamp to ensure it is responsive.
1. What is Responsive Web design?
A responsive website will create the optimum experience for visitors, no matter what size of screen they are using to browse the site. Whether the site is being displayed on a wide-screen desktop PC, a laptop, an iPad or a mobile, the information will be easy to read and to navigate without the need to pinch and resize. The content on the site will automatically re-size itself and blocks of information will re-order on the page to make reading simple.
2. Why Choose a Responsive Design?
The old-fashioned way to display content on a mobile phone, was to have a totally separate website for phones. Now there are so many different screen sizes that it would be a nightmare to try to create versions of your site to cater for each individually. With responsive design there is no need for separate sites, all the html code remains the same, but using the meta “viewport” tag gives any browser instructions to adjust the dimensions and scaling of the page to suit the device it is viewed on. CSS styling with your website template does the rest!
With such a vast number of screen sizes for desktop, laptop, tablets and phones, it is absolutely the best way to cater for all. Google recommends using responsive design for all websites.
3. What are the benefits of Responsive Web Design?
- The most obvious benefit is to the visitor who will be guaranteed the best experience when navigating though your website whether they are using anything from a desktop PC to a mobile.
- From an SEO point of view, your site will benefit from the fact that links to all pages are to just one website – and so the SEO value is not split between the mobile site and the desktop version.
- A responsive design also saves resources when a Googlebot crawls your site and helps to improve the site’s ranking.
- Having only one version of your site makes it easier and therefore cheaper to maintain it.
- It also offers future scalability, making it easy to support any new screen sizes and new devices in the future.
4. How can I check if my site is already responsive?
You can test with a Google app
Alternatively, simply open the website on a desktop PC and resize the browser. If your websites’ layout re-sizes and the layout changes, the site is responsive.
5. Would a responsive design work in older browsers?
The simple answer is yes! A responsive website uses media queries set up with CSS which work with all the latest browsers. There are Javascript solutions for making the older browsers behave correctly. Only Internet Explorer would not, and no-one should be using such an outdated and insecure browser anyway!
