Articles
Responsive Design: A Better Option in Mobile App Development
Posted on August 18, 2014
Responsive web design, a term coined by Ethan Marcotte, is now a trend in mobile app development.
As people access the Internet from a wide array of devices, this trend has paved the way towards our website’s adaptability. This means websites work equally well in whatever browser we’re using.
More importantly, this advancement in mobile web design is supported by Google.
In addition, here are a few other important reasons why it’s a better option in developing your website:
Domain protection
Responsive design is a better option if you want to keep a single domain (e.g. outsourceit2philippines.com). Otherwise, you would have to create separate domains for mobile and desktop devices.
This may not be a problem if your website is already very popular. But if you’re still building your reputation, this can dilute your main domain. Different domains for each device complicate the sharing of your main domain or web address. This can hurt organic search results.
Adaptive to every web device
Since mobile devices upgrade each year, it’s impossible or impractical to keep creating custom mobile sites and pages for each one.
So rather than developing unique domains for different device browsers, Ethan Marcotte of alistapart.com recommends designing for an optimal viewing experience by making websites adaptive to the media that render them.
In other words, the website’s design should have the capacity to automatically respond to the user’s device preferences.
Better for SEO
Google considers the advantage responsive design can give on page rankings. Hence, if you choose responsive design to retain all your SEO contents in one domain, your pages will have a better chance of ranking higher.
According to hubspot.com, if we’re ranking for certain keywords across two or more domains, we’re spreading out the work we’re doing to acquire search ranking authority. This makes our efforts half as effective as they should be.
A single domain means Google only has to crawl one site that is accessed across every device. So, don’t spread out your SEO ranking.
Preserved Brand
Through a responsive design, you can retain your site’s header, layout, and other elements that make it identifiable and worth remembering. This can help maintain your brand identity across multiple devices.
Future ready
Lastly, responsive design is more dynamic. A website with this design will work across different versions of web or mobile browsers. Thus, it’ll be easier for developers to adjust and accommodate new devices with no overhaul or re-programming needed.
Responsive design, thus, is a better option. It can also guarantee better return of investments. It may not be able to fix all your mobile browser bugs, but it’s a more practical mobile app development solution in the long run.