7 Major Reasons to Say Yes to Responsive Web Design

With the meteoric rise in the use of mobile devices - you’d be doing yourself huge disfavor if your website isn’t designed to respond and adjust to mobile and other devices.

One nifty method of doing this would be to apply a responsive web design (RWD). It involves creating content that supports user actions, regardless of the type of device they have. This means your site will automatically reconfigure itself or respond, to suit the size and type of device a visitors happen to be using.

It's all about improving the user experience, particularly to enable people to do or find what they want via the mobile easily. As a result, pages should load quickly, and site design has to minimize the need for resizing, scrolling, typing, and panning.

What is Responsive Web Design?

It's the practice of building a website suitable to work on any device and any screen size, despite how large or small, desktop, or mobile.

RWD is concentrated around delivering an intuitive and enjoyable experience for all users. Cell phone and desktop users benefit alike from responsive websites.

There’re 4 general screen sizes that responsive design is aimed at: the widescreen desktop monitor, the smaller desktop or laptop, the tablet, and the mobile phone.

In summary, the assortment of screen sizes and resolutions is widening every day, and producing a different version of a website that matches each individual device isn't a practical way. This's the issue that responsive web design addresses head-on.

Main Components

Main components of responsive web design include: fluid grid, media queries, and flexible images.

For web designers, it indicates abandoning pixels and replacing them with web layouts that use percentages and em’s (relative units of measurement).

Certainly, it doesn’t signify you stop working with pixels in image-editing software. Instead, an added step that includes a little bit of math becomes a part of the web design operation, as you convert pixels into web layouts that use a relative unit of measurement.

You can also have multiple versions of the image on the server, and then dynamically serve the appropriately sized version relying on the user agent employing client-side or server-side feature detection in pair with DOM manipulation.

Also, you can hide images altogether if you really want to put the focus on the non-image content, applying media queries that serve a stylesheet which sets the display.

They aren’t specifically mobile solution or tablet solution. Instead, media queries and responsive web design lets you think outside of the constraints of the resolution or screen size and start building sites that flexibly adapt to various mediums.

4. Adapts Easily to Every Screen Size

Another advance of having good, responsive website ready for all devices is its adaptability to every screen size.

With a great design, you're way ahead of your rivals. And it positions your site to seamlessly cater to newer devices with which users use to surf the Internet like smartwatches, IoT devices, etc. Your site can instantly adjust itself to fit any screen.

5. Improves Your SEO

Responsive websites have a better ranking in SERPs. The user-focused experience and high-quality content could boost your dwell time. Thereby making visitors stick around for the long run.

Big G recommends a responsive website design template. Remember, it makes great user experience and increases your SEO results across all platforms.

6. Lower Bounce Rates

Bounce rate displays the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing a single page only. A responsive website means users will stay on your site longer, which minimizes your bounce rate.

Visitors will be more inclined to click through and read other pages on your website and explore everything you have to offer.

7. Higher Conversion Rates

More time on your website and lower bounce rate are excellent first steps to improving your visitor’s user experience and building trust. That improved UX and trust guide to better conversion rates, whether conversion means, making a purchase, booking a call, or signing up for your newsletter.

Don’t forget that average smartphone conversion rates are up by 65% compared to desktop, so it’s easy to see why an RWD is imperative.

Responsive Web Design Examples

Check out the beautiful responsive website examples below for inspiration in your RWD projects:

Boston Globe – It's a pioneer in this practice and best responsive website design example. Its neat typography is evident throughout both views making it easy and ready to use.

Designmodo - Designmodo features a quite clean and clear design with an ideal responsive interface. The images and the text scaled ideally on different mobile screens sizes.

More Hazards – More Hazards remove any anti-mobile issues by keeping its mobile version pretty minimal and retaining functionality as well.

Bonobos – Bonobos facilitates navigation to a simple hamburger menu icon on the left and shopping cart to the right.

Skinny Ties – Streamlined and uber-fast, both the seminal site and the mobile one provide speed and style with its responsive web design.

Change.org – The mobile version of Change.org appropriately adjust to the size and resolution of the mobile device, making it an ideal example of RWD.

Mashable – Mashable gets content to its audience rapidly and successfully with smart reading panes and smooth-moving navigation. Multiple social buttons make sharing content as a piece of cake.

Starbucks – Starbucks uses traditional grid mobile web design to make a snappy, functional mobile website which involves a handy store locator.

MRY – MRY is designed with parallax scrolling, animation, and bold colors. The mobile site echoes the same mission as desktop version, but with simple navigation icons that expand, and a scroll button that guides users to its case studies.

The Paint Drop – The Paint Drop offers a simple scrolling website that features easy to understand icons with UX large touch targets and a useful color palette.