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Good To Know
Ah, for ye olden days of the Internet — when a designer could build a website to a particular fixed width that would likely fit on any common display. One and done.
And then along came smartphones, and the concept that any one design would suit all of your website's visitors went entirely out the window.
After a brief and misguided fix that involved creating entirely separate sites designed to be used by mobile visitors — Who remembers those "Click here for our mobile site" links? — industry best practices landed on a much better solution: responsive design.
Responsive design has been the norm for developers at Root802 for about a decade. By specifying webpage elements in terms of percentage of available screen space — and serving specialized stylesheets based on screen width — responsive sites adapt on-the-fly to offer users optimal experiences based on the type of device they’re using — desktop browser, tablet or smartphone.
Responsive web design is a more practical and manageable alternative to creating separate and parallel content specifically for users of mobile devices either through a mobile-specific website or smartphone app. Responsive sites also fare better with search engines such as Google.
In February 2023, mobile phones accounted for nearly 61% of all web traffic. (Source: gs.statcounter.com) If you include the variety of tablet sizes into the mix, the percentage of visitors viewing your website on a wide desktop display is pretty small.
So if you're working with a developer to build a brand new website for your business, make responsive design an absolute requirement.
And if you have a site online that doesn't respond to screen size and leaves mobile and tablet visitors scrolling left-right to see your entire page, you're way overdue for a redesign.
