2013 – The year of Responsive design

This is the year of responsive web design. As consumers cross over more and more to multiple devices we need to look at some misconceptions involving responsive design.

 

1.       Customers want the same website experience regardless of the device they are on.

False

For example the store locator experience on a desktop browser needs to be changed on mobile. You have to think what do customers want on the device they are using. On a smart phone customer probably just want to locate the store. So even though the store locater might be somewhat buried on a desktop browser it needs to be prominent on mobile.

2.       Responsive design makes your website faster.

False 

You could think that because your not making a call to a server it should be faster. That everything happening in the browser  should happen quickly. Actually sometimes it doesn’t. If you think about responsive design being one website for all devices. All the content, images and files that make up a webpage have to be called from server back to the browser and displayed accordingly based on the responsive design. You may end up resizing an image, not showing a certain image, moving store locator highlighter on the page etc. But all the elements of that webpage have to be called from the server.  So a word of caution when your doing a responsive design, don’t just think that because your doing it that your websites download speeds or how fast pictures on your website show is going to improve.

3.       Responsive design is ‘future proof’

False 

What does the future have in store for responsive design? Is responsive design future proof? The answer is ‘No’. 

Look at the changes that have happened over the last 10 years, and how fast these changes came about. Even if you just look at html5 and how its still not a global standard. Were going to see a lot of innovations in the future. Responsive design is something you do to satisfy web browsers. We’ve got the questions should you build a mobile website or build an app but throw in html5 and you can have very app like websites. Maybe browsers wont be needed one day, perhaps innovation will mean app can talk to app. Perhaps one day users will be using joysticks or body movements to control content from their TV. We don’t really know what the future holds

 

4.       Responsive Design will improve your conversion rates and make you a lot more money.

False 

A usable website doesn’t necessarily mean a useful website. A lot of companies may get caught up in that next bright shiny object, and hear a lot about responsive designs so they pour a lot of time and money into it. But you need to be looking at what your user sees, where they are in the moment, their behaviour, what their needs are, again going back to the store locator scenario mentioned earlier. So what are your customers expecting from you on a mobile device. Are they showrooming using mobile, are they looking for a store, what brand experience are they expecting from you on a mobile device? If you address that first and then keep in mind throughout construction, it has to be useful to that consumer, consider context, behaviour, what they’re doing and need now from you, then a responsive design can help. But it wont necessarily just turn your conversions from 1% into 3%. And if responsive design isn’t vigilant about maintain high performance then it can be a hindrance to conversion.