The Future of the Web: The Case for Responsive Design

Technology is advancing at a rapid pace and users are finding it overwhelming to cope up with the number of new devices and platforms that keep emerging. However, many experts believe that Responsive Web Design will work uniformly well regardless whatever changes of mobile devices the future holds.

According to surveys, mobile subscribers are increasingly opting for smartphones and tablets sales are swiftly overtaking the sales of laptops. However, it is said that with responsive web design, your website will react perfectly well to any device that is accessing it – be it a smartphone or tablet or whatever.

Instead of building numerous apps or separate websites for compatibility with various devices, it is only logical to make your website uniformly responsive to multiple devices.

Responsive web design is indeed the most talked about subject in the web industry nowadays, However, what remains to be seen is whether responsive web design is one more short-lived craze or is it the lasting solution to the web future.

A study conducted last year by Google revealed that more than 75 percent of users prefer a mobile-friendly site. In other words, they expect that your website to be favorably responsive to mobile devices.

The users are happy that the responsive design builds on one site and they want it to function uncompromisingly perfectly across all devices. This means you have to just maintain a single site and content alone needs to be updated in one spot.

Designing a responsive website will no doubt be less expensive and less tedious than designing/building multiple unique sites and apps for various devices.

But there are some opposing views on whether responsive web design is the technique of the future. While blogs may ideally fit into responsive designs, large content-heavy sites with images will have to be compromised with – as any heavy design that looks superb on a 22” monitor will not be the same on a mobile phone device.

Notwithstanding criticisms, responsive web design has a promising future. Already you can discern some tremendous progress in Ecommerce. A recent case study has conclusively proved that smartphone users are more interested to buy from a responsive website than download an app.

Responsive web design is certainly the best way to cater to the mobile audience. One thing must be acknowledged by both proponents and critics that the concept of responsive web designs are steadily evolving. Soon will come a time, when all websites will become truly responsive and whatever limitations there are will be surmounted.