Is your website responsive? Do you want to develop a responsive website for your brand? These are the common queries we get to hear these days. Everyone is keen to join the responsive design hype, yet some people are unaware of what actually a responsive web design is and how it is taking the web industry by storm. Not many people are aware of the statistics which are being highlighted to support the case for Responsive Web Design with each passing year. The rise in iPhones, iPads, Smartphones and tablets have made Responsive designs a necessity. It is the top priority of every business to adopt a responsive design for the coming year. The web development evolution has come a long way from a single page website to a multi pager responsive design.
What is the hype all about?
If you are one of those few souls left on this planet still not to have known about responsive designs, do just one thing. Open any popular website on your phone. Can’t find your smart phone? View it on your tablet. You will observe that the top navigation bar will convert into a Menu Grid and the text will also shrink but the web design will be fully available for viewing. A Responsive design will make sure that it employs “media queries” to configure what resolution or device it’s being viewed on and then size it correctly to fit the screen.
That’s just what you need for your website to reach millions who prefer using Smart phones and Tablets over the conventional desktop. Even laptops have started to look like extinct species when compared to these handy devices. The responsive design will contain flexible images by the use of dynamic resizing or CSS. It can make the images and content columns shrink with the sidebar being disappeared altogether. All these elements connected to a responsive design are now becoming increasingly necessary to incorporate into new and existing business and other websites.
What does it do?
Cutting a long story short, these are the elements that will be included in the responsive design to make your website fit in any screen size successfully across all platforms. In all web development resources related to website development, responsive design has a prominent place.
These are a few elements of the responsive design that would be incorporated into your website:
- As soon as some particular width values are hit the entire page width adjusts itself to be small.
- Navigation menu shrinks to a button or a grid.
- Images and texts do not disappear but get adjusted with the device preferences.
Statistics to Support the Case for Responsive Web Design
We are awestruck with the statistics which are being revealed to support the case for Responsive Web Design. Experts have already predicted that by the year 2014 a major fraction of web traffic will be mobile.
Let’s take a look at the statistics below to view how a responsive design will be a dire need for the future with the constant rise of hand held devices.
- 5.1 billion out of the 6.8 billion population worldwide currently possess a mobile phone.
- 91% of American citizens keep their cell phones within their reach 24 hours a day. The average number of times which they check their phones in a single day is 150! Now that’s something which really leaves us speechless.
- By 2015, mobile web browsing is expected to leave behind desktop internet usage and it can happen even sooner than that!
- 90% of people are switching to multiple screens to browse the internet.
- 90% of all smartphone searches lead to an online shopping deal or a visit to a business website.
- 61% of users come back to Google to search a site that can be read with less hassle.
- Almost $38.8 billion is expected to be consumed on shopping through smartphones in 2013.
- Out of all internet visits, Americans access the internet 28 percent more using their smartphones as compared to their conventional desktops.
- 21% of visitors of the e-commerce website traffic use their smart phones to access web pages.
- In 2012, 62% of brands which switched to a website specifically designed for a mobile witnessed an increase in sales.
- There exist hundreds of screen sizes for mobile devices, and the figure continues to increase each year.
Now you may be thinking that it’s not a big deal. We can simply hire someone to design a mobile friendly website. This makes us reach thousands of users worldwide. But let’s not get so much excited already. There are numerous different devices worldwide and the number of screen sizes range from 232 and more.
Are you supposed to design 232 different layouts for your website to be deployed on different devices? That’s when Responsive Web Design comes into the picture. You design just a single layout which automatically fits itself on the screen it is being viewed on. The term is coined as ‘responsive’ due to its functionality to ‘respond’ to the screen size it is being displayed on. Hence the designs are know as Responsive Designs.
The statistics which we have revealed above clearly support the use for responsive design as it stretches your audience and has the capability to reach millions. Your website is viewed flawlessly on all devices, be it computers, smart phones or tablets.
Why you should adopt a Responsive Web Design for a secure place in Future?
In 2012, the case of Responsive Web Design was made even more stronger when Google regarded it to be the best strategy for smartphone-optimized websites. Not only it makes your website look great everywhere and on all platforms but it strengthens your web strategy with no additional app development. It is good for SEO purposes as Google is keen on directing visitors to the sites which they actually want to see! As we witness a raging response to hand held devices, responsive web design will ultimately have a major importance in future of web design for all business and other websites worldwide. The sooner you adopt it, the better you are geared up for the future.