What is Responsive Design? Should you have a Desktop and Mobile Version of your site? Or Responsive?

What is Responsive Design?

Google is requiring that we make our website Mobile Friendly. Should you have a Desktop and a Mobile Version of your site?

We suggest that instead of having two separate sites (one for mobile and one for desktops), you should have a Responsive Site. Responsive Design is the method of building a site that responds to the exact dimensions of the device you’re using.

The benefit of Responsive design is:

1. Flexibility – A Responsive designed website will work well on all devices that exist today and devices that haven’t yet been made!
2. Ease of Management – Instead of having to update two websites (a desktop and mobile version of your site) you have one site to manage.
3. Full Content on Desktop and Mobile – Often times Mobile Versions of websites have far less content than Desktop versions… this often gets in the way for mobile users. Mobile users want the same information they can get on a Desktop website, but on their Mobile Device. A responsive design website retains all the content that your Desktop has and optimizes it for their smaller device’s screen.

Test if your site’s mobile friendliness by using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool.

What does a Responsive Website look like? View this video: