Have you ever come across a website on your mobile or tablet that doesn't show quite right? You might see it's layout all messed up or it just won't allow you to navigate? Well, that's the result of a non-responsive web design.
New devices with higher resolution, higher pixel density and more hardware are coming out everyday and support for old ones is slowly fading with the updates on Operating Systems and the whole browsers layout. It is the perfect time to act quickly and get working on a responsive web design.
What is Responsive Web Design?
Responsive Web Design is a website structure that is easily accessible on every device and is user-friendly. Responsive Web Design is often referred to as 'RWD' -- RWD is vital, every website owner should consider having a responsive template for his/her web design.
You might not know this but a responsive web design can help you hugely with your website reputation and page rank.
What good can a Responsive Web Design (RWD) bring?
Well, In many cases visitors often get annoyed with a 'gully' layout of websites without RWD and leave very quickly. A responsive web design can help those visitors interact with the layout easily without having any trouble which helps your website reputation and visitors often return relying on the fact they will see a clean layout and get what they want without difficulty or effort.
Think of it like this, "Everyone who visits your website might be your customer and if that valuable customer couldn't help himself around your 'store' he isn't going to discover the useful items on display."
As I've mentioned above, 'Responsive web design can help you hugely with your website reputation and page rank' -- It can turn your small amount of audience into a big flock of birds constantly flying towards your way.
What can I do to make my website 'Responsive'?
1. You can get a responsive template for your website. Wordpress Responsive Templates / Blogger Responsive Templates.
2. You can customize your website layout manually and get the responsiveness with the help of CSS3 @media tags. Learn more about @media tags.
3. You can use easy and very reliable services like Webflow to built a responsive layout.
You can either let professionals do it or you can do it yourself, It's not rocket science.
If you don't have any basic knowledge of Web Designing, I recommend you go over to w3schools.com and learn.
A Responsive Web Design is 'built' or 'put together' wtih the help of three major languages, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. CSS is the main course of responsiveness, with 'CSS Media Types' a website can have different layouts for mobile / tablet / large screen.
How it works
The Responsive Web Design depends or focuses on the screen size of the device that It's displayed on. When the screen is size is changed or zoomed in/out a rule or 'query' is declared and some objects on the screen are removed or re-sized to fit the smaller display. For example:
A simple <meta> tag can determine the screen size of the device by stating the following code into the website's <head> section:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"/>
By defining this code, the layout will act according to the screen's initial size.
(Note: There's a glitch in iOS device where the device doesn't recognize responsive templates if the code above is not not declared in the website's html head.)
Conclusion
So, is RWD worth it? Yes, it is. If you are thinking of getting a website or already have one, I recommend you to pick a responsive layout for it if you want it to succeed.
Many people neglect the importance of responsive web design, they are making a big mistake, all the successful and popular websites you see today have a responsive layout because they value their visitor and don't want anyone to have any problem visiting their website.