What is Responsive Web Design and Why is it so Important?

With responsive web design, you build one website that dynamically responds to the user's screen size.

15:15 25 January 2022

The evolution of the internet made certain standards change significantly and now websites are expected to be fluid and responsive across a range of different devices. This is where responsive web design comes in.

 

If you're building a site that will be used by users on both desktop and mobile devices, then you need to incorporate responsive design. Platforms such as Editor X can help you build great responsive websites.

 

By understanding the needs of the users who are viewing your site, you can make much better decisions about what to include in it. Having a responsive website means that you are designing your website to take up the same space on any screen size, rather than having two or more different designs.

 

Responsive web design is a must for almost all websites nowadays. The number of people browsing the Internet through mobile devices skyrocketed in the last decade, and so did the need for websites that can be viewed on any type of device.

 

What is responsive web design?

Responsive web design (RWD) is a design approach aimed at crafting websites to provide an optimal user experience – easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling – across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones).

 

Responsive web design is a user interface engineering or design paradigm that arose in an effort to address the shrinking timeframe for creating layouts, the proliferation of screen sizes, and the need for web content to live on any type of device.

 

Responsive web design is the best way to create websites that are accessible on any device. It's not about adding some code and creating another version of the website for different devices, but building the website in such a manner that it responds to different screens in an optimal way.

 

Responsive web design vs. Fixed-width web design

The first big decision that you need to make when designing your website is whether or not it will be responsive. A responsive website will automatically adjust to the screen size of the device that is accessing it, while a fixed-width website will provide a specific layout for certain screen sizes and any variation will result in a broken layout.

 

If your site only caters to people on desktops and laptops, then there is no need for it to be responsive and you can choose between fixed-width or fluid width layouts without any problem.

 

But in general, fixed-width websites are outdated because they are not compatible with all the different screen sizes and overall, users expect websites to be responsive.

 

A responsive website adjusts automatically according to your screen size – whether it’s on the largest desktop monitor or on your phone. It also provides a better user experience because you can access content at any time, with any device, and it doesn't feel too crowded.

 

Advantages of using responsive web design

Responsive web design is one of the most important components of website design, and some of its advantages are:

 

- The user experience improves which leads to more conversions on the website.

- The company can save up on their marketing budget since they don’t need to create different versions for mobile and desktop anymore.

- Improves the quality of the content as people would be able to view it without any hassle on any device.

- Helps with SEO as Google prefers websites that are mobile friendly over those that are not, which leads to higher ranking in search engine result pages (SERPS).

 

Responsive web design, loading speed and SEO

SEO is an important part of any company's business plan. To rank higher on search engines, a company needs to optimize its website. In the SEO world, one of the most-cited factors is a website's loading speed. If a website takes too long to load, it can significantly hurt the site's ranking on Google and other search engines.

 

There are a number of factors that affect the loading speed of a website, from the size and number of images to the quality of hosting.

 

In most cases, a site with a high loading speed has better SEO rankings than sites with slower load times. In fact, Google has been sending messages to webmasters since 2011 telling them how page load time impacts their page ranking and site visibility on SERPs.

 

With a responsive design, a website can adapt its layout to different screen sizes and have an optimized loading speed. A quick response time has long been considered an important metric when evaluating website performance, and with so many people using the Internet through their smartphones and tablets, being responsive or not can make all the difference for a website to rank high or not on SERPs.

 

Final words:

Responsive Web Design, or RWD, is a design technique that uses an approach that caters to the needs of all devices and screen sizes. Its main goal is to make websites more accessible and increase user experience.