eCommerce Glossary: Responsive Web Design

Glossary

What Is Responsive Web Design And Why Is It Important For Your Business?

What is a Responsive Web Design?

Surely, you'll agree with us that in today's world, it's hard to see an online business that doesn't require a mobile version of their website. According to a recent study by Statista, more than 50 percent of internet activities across the world are being carried out via mobile devices. This is followed by desktop devices, having over 47% of the total internet traffic. Tablets make up the rest of the traffic - about 2%. Since a higher percentage of people across the world prefer to access the internet via their mobile devices, all business owners need to offer a great mobile website experience for their visitors. Failure to do that means they might end up missing out on traffic, necessary to boost their business. But here's a question, how do you go about delivering a mobile-friendly website to your visitors? The answer to the question is through responsive web design.

Two people collaborating on web design with connected UI components

Now, here's a burning question, what is a responsive web design and how does it work for websites? These are exactly what we'll be looking at in this post. And in addition to them, we'll also be looking at the benefits attached to having a responsive web design, including the key elements involved. That said, let's dive right in.

Ever since the advancement in technology and the introduction of smartphones and tablets, there has been lots of pressure on web designers to build websites that respond to these devices. Initially, the only solution at that time was to create multiple stylesheets for various screen sizes. However, that's now changed with the introduction of responsive web design, a process that requires only a single stylesheet. With this process, designers now have fewer codes to look after. By definition, a responsive web design is a method, which involves designing web pages that appear in their optimized form across various devices, windows, or screen sizes.

Methods Involved In Creating A Responsive Website

How Does Responsive Web Design Works?

When it comes to creating a mobile-friendly website, it's worth knowing that you can do it in a couple of ways. They include dynamic serving and separate mobile site methods.

As far as the dynamic serving method is concerned, it involves using the same URL, however, with different CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) code and HTML. On the other hand, the separate mobile site method requires an entirely different mobile site. With this, it means when visitors visit the desktop URL through their mobile devices, they automatically get redirected to a different URL that represents the mobile website.

A responsive website consists of a few elements, which enables users to enjoy a great website experience, irrespective of their devices or screen sizes. These elements, which make up the technical aspects of a responsive web design, include fluid grids, flexible media, and CSS media queries. Let's take a look at the terms, one after the other, below.

Fluid grids
Fluid grids are grid systems that scale based on the visitor's screen. When it comes to responsive web design, we can not but talk about fluid grids. That's because it's the technical aspect that enables the website to adapt based on the user’s hardware and software. Furthermore, some of the methods involved in creating fluid (responsive) grids include the use of CSS media queries and sizing based on percentage. This is different from a fixed grid, which uses absolute units like pixels or centimeters. With fluid grids, it means the elements of your responsive website will have a consistent proportion and spacing.
Flexible images and texts
Another technical aspect of responsive web design is the creation of flexible images and text. For a responsive website, you must be able to get your texts and images to adapt to the browsing environment with the help of CSS.
Media queries
Another technical aspect of responsive web design is CSS media queries. In case you don't know, this is the functionality that's responsible for enabling designers to completely design different styles for different browser sizes. Here's an example below:

Speaking of the CSS media query example above, it's telling the browser not to display the class (foobar) anytime the viewport is anything less than 1500 pixels.

There are several reasons why you should consider creating a responsive website for your business.

Benefits of Using a Responsive Website

For SEO Purposes

One of the benefits of having a responsive website for your business is that it helps to improve search engine optimization. In 2015, Google introduced a way of ranking websites. By having separate desktop and mobile versions, website owners tend to encounter problems such as the issue of duplicate content. And is one of the factors that negatively affect a website's ranking on SERP. However, by having a responsive website, you can easily address the issue and achieve an improved SEO.

Reduction in Bounce Rates

A bounce rate is simply the number of visitors (percentage) that leave your website after viewing only one page on your site. The main factor that causes high bounce rates is having a page that loads slowly. Apart from that, having a website that's not responsive can also cause high bounce rates. That's so because users don't get the expected experience when they visit your site using different devices.

Low Maintenance

Another benefit of a responsive website is that it requires little time for maintenance compared to having a separate mobile site. As such, you can always convert the time for other important things, like content creation. Other benefits of having a responsive website for your business include the following; Faster pages, Improved online and offline browsing experiences, For more mobile traffic, Quick mobile development at lower costs, Increased conversion rates, and easier analytics reporting.

Are you interested in having a responsive website for your business? You can try out Clarity's e-commerce solution. That's because it was designed with responsive design as an integral part of the fabric and framework of our online commerce website platform. With that, it means whenever you create a new page and add new products using our solutions, they automatically come with responsive web design features. You can speak to an expert today by checking here.