What You Should Know About Responsive Design
Responsive website design is an approach to building websites that focuses on creating a site that will respond and work well in a wide range of devices, such as desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones.
Creating a site that is responsive and flexible, while still retaining its aesthetic beauty is a technical challenge.
Some of the key aspects of responsive design are:
- Making sure that page elements resize and realign themselves in a variety of devices.
- Creating navigation that takes into account that desktop users typically use a mouse and smartphone users navigate by tapping the screen.
- Assessing the key functional areas of a website (like the checkout of an ecommerce site) and make sure that the functionality and layout make sense for users on each type of device.
HEROweb has been hard at work on building a responsive framework and in September of 2013 has shifted to utilizing responsive design for all of our new websites.
To see an example of our latest work, you can go to Bali Bay Trading Company.
If you view the Bali Bay Trading Company site on a range of devices, you will see how the elements of the site change, depending on the device you are using.
Do you need responsive design for your website?
If you are building a new website, you will want it to be developed with a responsive design framework or consider developing a completely custom site for mobile users. So many people use mobile devices to access the web, that having a site that operates well on these devices is crucial.
If you have an existing site, we recommend viewing your own site in a variety of devices and evaluating whether it works reasonably well for users on smartphones and tablets.
Some sites are relatively easy to convert to responsive design. Others involve significant work. Older sites that rely heavily on html tables rather than stylesheets can be more challenging to transition to a responsive design.
HEROweb is happy to talk with you about your current site and evaluating whether it is a good candidate to move to our responsive design framework.
