Responsive Website Design – more than just a ‘buzzword’

It wasn’t that long ago that a responsive website merely meant that you could load the pages within a few painful minutes over a dodgy, intermittent dial-up modem – assuming no-one else was on the ‘phone at the time. That and you could bare the screeching facsimile-esq whining while you dialled into the information super-highway.

In those days you could almost relish in the fact that anyone visiting your website would be sat in front a beige box with an Intel Pentium Pro sticker proudly glistening on the side. The Age of the PC. It was a great time for web, with the birth of online shopping, a massive surge in E-Commerce and everyone wanted to get online. With a 56k dial-up modem and a fifteen minute wait to get connected, we were ONLINE! Phew!

Now however, the pace of the net has changed, dramatically, but perhaps nowhere near as dramatically as the way we get online. Shortly after the beige, dial-up machines came the influx of WAP mobiles. It was rubbish. The web for mobiles wasn’t ready. The technology wasn’t ready, we as consumers weren’t ready to go online on-the-go. Today with every man and his dog online, WiFi in abundance and 4G signals beaming all around us its no surprise that more and more people are using mobile devices to hook up to the web.

Recently, desktops have seen massive decline in use when it comes to people browsing the web. For the first time, mobile users surpassed desktop users in recent website traffic stats. “So what?” you may ask. “My website hits haven’t gone down” you may quip. However, the trend you will no doubt notice is that if your website is not responsive to the device it’s served on to, users will not stick around.

What is a responsive website?

A responsive website is one that knows the screen size of the device it’s being browsed on and adapts accordingly. Whether this is simply adjusting the layout to suit a smaller mobile display, turning off data-intensive features for certain devices or just offering a better more mobile friendly menu.

Many clients comment that there’s not really a need to “go responsive” stating that you can zoom in and out on an iPhone or that you can “see most of it on a tablet” however this attitude does not always pay dividends in the long run. Sure, you can zoom in and out on a mobile, but who wants to do that? Seriously, when you go on those old-fashioned websites where the layout is set in stone, and you have to pan around with your index finger looking for the information…no wonder analytics shows such a high bounce rate. People are fickle. They know that if they can’t find the information within seconds of landing on your page, then they are just one swipe away from heading back to Google to find one that does.

Google are well aware of this.

To promote good website design, Google now actively promotes pages that are responsive, as they know that there’s a better user experience waiting at the end of it.

As a website design and development provider, Jelly Graphics & Marketing LTD recognise this and offer completely responsive websites. We know user experience is crucial, and understand how people will use your site, and how to best make it work.

We offer several web services from hosting here in Telford, Shropshire, from design, development, through to maintenance. We build responsive sites from scratch or we can take a non-responsive site and make it zing on mobiles, tablets, desktops and laptops.

If you’d like to know more, or would like a quote, contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss your needs. We’re based on a solid foundation of honesty, if we can help you out then we will, no hard sell, no nonsense.