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What is Responsive Web Design?

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What exactly does it mean to be “mobile-friendly”? This simply means a website is optimized to be viewed on a mobile device.

In web design, there are many ways to make a website be mobile-friendly: apps, another website, etc. You may have heard the words Responsive Web Design before, or some phrase with the word Responsive in it, but wonder what it really means. It simply means the website’s layout responds to a user’s viewing device automatically – no separate software or app required – nor is it a “simplified” version of a website. You’ve seen those before: where you often have to go to the “non-mobile” version, to find the content you are looking for. At Eyesite Creative, we use Responsive web design to ensure all of our websites are mobile-friendly.

Responsive layouts are also be considered flexible, in that it automatically adapts to a user’s window size. If you are behind a desktop computer, test out responsiveness for yourself by modifying the size of your viewing window: watch the website “respond” right before your eyes. It doesn’t matter whether a user is behind a monitor, tablet or phone: the layout adapts to the user’s screen size, and is not hardware specific. This helps ensure a responsive website will continue to work in the future as new technology/phones/versions get released.

The concept of responsive web design has been around for years, but became more mainstream when Google announced it was going to change it’s mobile search results. Test to see if your website is ranked “mobile-friendly” through Google here. It’s now a necessity for websites to work appropriately on mobile devices.

Contact us today for a consultation on your new or existing website on how you can make it responsive.