What a responsive and functional website looks like.

What makes a website good? What makes a good website great? Well, a lot of factors affect the end result of what can be determined a great website. However, forget about the frills, bangs and whistles for a moment. At its a core, a website should meet a need, it should be functional, and allow a visitor to obtain whatever it is that they need, in the shortest amount possible, and enjoy the experience so much, that they return agin and agin, and... again.

The traditional method was to create multiple versions of a website, and then serve the appropriate versions based on the type of device being used by the visitor. This approach is relatively simple, as each version of the website exists independently of the others. Due to this separation, changes can be made to each version without affecting the others. However, this freedom comes at a fairly high price. First, designers have to design and build each version of the website. This isn’t just time-consuming for designers, but more expensive for clients. Additionally, as the number and types of devices continues to grow, it is becoming exceedingly difficult to address each one appropriately.

Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and an intelligent use of CSS media queries. As the user switches from their laptop to iPad, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. In other words, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the user’s preferences. This would eliminate the need for a different design and development phase for each new gadget on the market. So whether you are looking at the website on a giant 55 inch tv, or a tiny 4 inch iPhone, your website automatically changes size and elements to suit that screen size. Readability and user experience are improved.

But responsive Web design is not only about adjustable screen resolutions and automatically resizable images, but rather about a whole new way of thinking about design. Do you need a Responsive website created for your company?