Why should your website be responsive?
May 8th, 2015
Is your website responsive? To find out if it is click the link below and type in the website address (Google mobile test).
For a website to be responsive it has to adjust layout to best suit the device it’s viewed. Allowing the website user to optimally view the text and images without excessive scrolling or zooming in and out.
To keep this short and sweet more than half of the worlds internet users now uses mobiles and tablets to Access the World Wide Web. With technology ever evolving and new devices coming out its more important than ever to have a responsive website.
With an ever increasing number of individuals using mobiles and tablets to view websites. Google are now penalising websites that aren’t responsive. This is resulting in the Google page rank being decreased leading to websites dropping down the search lists.
It’s relatively easy to design a new website or adapt a current website to be responsive. Utilising a column or fluid layout which can adapts using CSS3 media queries, a common design technique to change views at breakpoints and different screen sizes.
Here is the technical bits.
When I convert a website to be responsive a viewport meta tag is placed in the HTML header to tell the web browser to make the viewport(screen) width to be the device width.
I add a new CSS file normally called responsive.css to the styles directory of the server. Within this file CSS3 media queries are then used to tell the website to change styles by showing/hiding and adapting the layout and styles of the website depending on the screen width or orientation.
Media queries are the most common technique to achieving a responsive website. If you want any more information or to receive a quote to make your website responsive please get in touch.