Responsive Web Design: The way forward
We all have our own pet hates in life. One person in our team really dislikes having to queue, especially when he makes the effort to actively avoid them but sometimes finds that his efforts are in vain. Another one of us cannot stand people who do not take their rucksacks off when standing on the underground. Admittedly, we all find the former a bit annoying, but all of us agree on one pet hate in particular that really gets our goat: unresponsive websites.
You are probably now wondering what we mean by this. Well, an unresponsive website is a website that has been built without the designer considering how it will look and function on a mobile device such as an iPad or an iPhone. It will also have been built without considering the needs of the end-user. In our opinion, a website or application that isn’t user-friendly is very frustrating to use. Put it this way, if you have ever tried to visit a website using your mobile phone and there have been images missing, navigation all over the place and you are generally left feeling quite lost, then you will understand what we mean by this. It is very irritating indeed. Luckily, there is now such as a thing as ‘Responsive Design’, which is a relatively new concept in the world of web but has created quite a buzz over the last year or so.
A gentleman called Ethan Marcotte introduced the concept in his article Responsive Web Design but you won’t need to read this to understand more. For there is a very simple way to test whether a website design is responsive or not. For example, if you open a website on your desktop browser and try to make it thinner and wider, you will note that the layout will either respond to your request and adjust itself in order to fit the new width of the browser or it will just get smaller and smaller and the content and website will eventually vanish into the small box you have created. If this is the case, then the website is not responsive. For a website to be truly responsive, the user should be able to make the browser as thin as they like without losing any content. One would also be able to see the mobile version with ease, as the design would have been adapted for this very purpose.
In our opinion, the more user-friendly a website or application is the better it is to use. As a website owner, you wouldn’t want your users to feel frustrated or annoyed as a result of finding everything unpleasant to use. Users are unlikely to return on this basis and will seek another website that is more user-friendly (which is likely to be a competitors’).
We all hope that the web will become more responsive as time goes by. It is best practice to create beautiful designs with the user in mind as that way you are doing everything within your power to ensure that your users will keep coming back and remain happy.