In this article you will find information on what a responsive site is how to create pages that are adaptable to mobile and desktop and what advantages it has for positioning on search engines.
What Is The Meaning Of Responsive Or Responsive Site?
A responsive or responsive website is a website that improves the user experience based on the device we use to view it.
A responsive site in the eyes of a normal user is any website, and so it should be. In reality, if done well, it hides a technology that makes it usable in the best way on the most popular devices. For example, on a desktop PC we can pleasantly read a text paginated in two or three columns, but on a smartphone? It would be crap, so it has to be adapted to be displayed for example on a single column.
The same thing goes for images or for other elements on the website. The limited screen size of smartphones also makes it difficult to click on small or too close elements, which may not create any problems on the desktop. The photos and responsive images adapt perfectly to the width of the screen and there is no need to annoyingly zoom in on the content. Imagine you have a contact form with a button that allows you to send you an email but that the user can't click because it's too small. Do you want to lose a potential customer?
Or imagine a site where the texts are small, you can't figure out where to click, having to resort to frequent zooms with the result that the user immediately leaves your site. Sure, you could make a smartphone-only site, but would you leave out all other devices? For this reason, responsive websites allow you to have a single site and automatically readjust its layout to improve its usability on each device used.
By improving the user experience, we can make your prospects spend more time on your website, increasing the chance of conversion.
How to Create Responsive Design
If you want to create your own website, I suggest you find a responsive Website Design Company. You can find excellent free or paid templates using the Wordpress platform. Before choosing between the various responsive templates, make sure that the responsive layout is well usable for mobile phones and for pc layouts with various resolutions.
Make sure that the menu is transformed adequately by adapting to the size of the screen: usually in the top right or top left an icon with three lines is displayed, called hamburger menu, which allows you to view the list of pages for mobile. On larger devices, a menu with horizontal items across the top of the page is often used.
Responsive Css and Html: Break Point and Media Query
The magic that allows the change of layout in a mobile friendly site based on the width of the device is the programming of a responsive css. Break points are decided by the responsive web designer, which establish ranges of devices based on the resolution. To these device width bands with associated css rules.
So the responsive html layout with inserted images and texts does not change, but different rules are called based on the width of the screen, or to be more precise of the browser window on which the page is opened.
The break point (or media query) chosen must take into account both the most common screen resolutions on the market and with which devices your target audience views the internet pages. In general we use a media query ranging from 1px wide to 600px or 700px for mobile phones, a break point up to 1000px for tablets and a last one from 1300px onwards for computer screens; they are not fixed rules and always depend on the type of graphic project and the evolution of technology.
Differences between a Responsive Website and an Adaptive Website
A responsive website has a single layout that changes according to the space of the window in which we are looking at it: the browser displays the content based on the media query declared in the css.
In a mobile adaptive site the server proposes the best version for the connecting device. There are two more templates for each device.
The approach is very different and we can conclude in summary that the responsive sites are lighter, more pleasant to navigate and easier to modify and manage on the Seo side. An adaptive site can be used for projects that require ad hoc content and layout for each device. However, it is possible to make an old site adaptive by developing a new version for mobile phones, while it is not possible to make an existing site easily responsive.
Mobile Vs Desktop: Browsing Data with Devices
With the spread of smartphones and tablets, the exclusive use of the desktop computer to surf the internet is now a distant memory. Today we daily consult online resources such as newspapers, emails and certainly social networks, no longer exclusively through PCs, but much more frequently with our smartphone. Even a study conducted by Hootsuite.
As for websites, according to Comscore research, in recent years 25% (9.3 million) of the 278.3 million United State who connect have used only smartphones or tablets, while 24% (9, 1 million) connected via PC only. The remaining 51% of users access the internet using both devices. If we consider that there are various models of smartphones and tablets with various screen sizes, it means that each of us sees the website differently.
The Advantages of Responsive Websites for Google Indexing
Google's algorithm that decides in which position to show websites is secret, but we know something about it. For some years (precisely from April 21, 2015), Google has given a lot of importance to responsive websites to the detriment of "old" websites that do not have the ability to adapt to the screens of the new devices we use to connect.
A few years ago, a desktop version and a separate site with a mobile version were created. However, since it is now known that two sites with the usual duplicate content are penalized by Google, with the consequence of sinking into the bottom of the search results, the responsive website has become the best solution to solve the problem, becoming a real ranking factor that affects the positioning in the SERP.
How to Know If Your Website Is Responsive?
If your site is very old, chances are it isn't, but to be sure, Google has provided this tool with which you can check it. Sometimes that's not enough, as it only shows you if the site is optimized for mobile and not mobile and desktop at the same time, but it can give you an idea. Just open the link and write the name of your site in the bar.
If you need to create a new site from scratch or if you think you need a restyling of your website, you can contact us at info@webdigitalmediagroup.com or call us at the contact details at the bottom of the footer and we will be able to advise you on the best choice.
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