WHAT IS RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN?

Responsive website design leverages the latest technology and coding techniques to deliver a website that responds to any device, regardless of size, resolution, or brand. Whether your audience is viewing your website on a desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone; the layout and design will automatically react to the screen size and resolution of each individual viewer.

In the past, separate versions of websites were created to achieve this concept. For example, when someone visited your site from a mobile phone, the site would redirect to a different version of your site designed specifically for mobile devices. The problem with this approach is there are too many different screen sizes and resolutions in the market today to have specific layout boundaries. So today, we build fluid layout websites that are not only [every] mobile friendly, but tablet and desktop friendly as well. This means that the layout and images resize themselves for the best possible aesthetic fit for the screen. This naturally Increases the user experience and insuring nothing is lost due to cross device compatibility.

IS RESPONSIVE DESIGN A TREND?

Let’s take a look at a few figures…
Sales
– In 2012 tablets outsold notebooks in the US and China. In 2013 this trend will be global.
– There are more iPhones sold per day (402k) than people born in the World per day (300k).
– There are 900,000 Android phones activated daily (not including tablets)

Usage
– 85% of all US adults have smartphones – 56% of them get online. That’s roughly 132 million people in the US alone.
– 78% of US smartphone owners use their smartphones in-store to help with purchases
– There are over 1 billion smartphones in use globally
– Roughly 2.4 billion people on planet earth have access to the internet. In developing countries these are mostly mobile users.

Market Penetration
It took over 30 years for 10% of consumers to get electricity. It took 7.5 years for the smartphone to reach 10% of consumers, and slightly more than 2 years for the tablet. No other technology has penetrated society so quickly in history.

Not considering different devices when building a new website is frustrating to your potential customers. If your site takes too long to load, or is not displaying your information the way you intended you are turning away potential business. The trend of different sized screens is not going away any time soon, so make sure and test out the way your site looks on every different device you can get your hands on.