There has been an on going battle between having a responsive and adaptive web design. Trying to figure out which design will work best for you! This isn’t just an opinion, this requires the understanding of what makes these two types of styles different and then figuring out the pros and cons on why the mobile traffic is so important.
Having A Responsive Design
The goal to having an responsive web design is to make sure your website is fully functional at any display size. This does require a fair amount of coding, and understanding the different sizes while having a clear image of how the scaling process will work. This is why you should leave it in the hands of a professional designer.
Responsive design creates fluid layouts that can automatically scale in size to make all elements fit in any type of resolution. This may cause some of the photos that were originally floating to the left of the text to drop the space in between the two paragraphs, scales up the text while it’s scaling down the side of the column in which it’s being placed.
With having a responsive design, it’s the number one most standard favorite with all designers and the majority of businesses. Not just because it often takes less technical work than having an adaptive layout but it makes the website fully compatible with any resolution. With all the new smartphone and other mobile devices that come out every year the resolution only gets higher! Responsive design assures you that you do not have to update your site every time a new iPhone comes out. Having an Adaptive layout is a different story.
Having A Adaptive Design
Some entrepreneurs that have a decent amount of experience with web design may not fully be familiar with the terms and concepts of an adaptive web design, but it does have its share of benefits.
Adaptive layouts are designed for specific resolutions and display sizes depending on the browsing window you are looking at. With an adaptive layout it checks what the resolution of your browsing screen is and loads the code for that webpage in a different way in order to display properly for that resolution. It sounds like a lot of extra work right? Actually adaptive design offers a level of fine-tuning and control that responsive layouts can’t do. Also by having full control over the design at multiple resolutions you are able to ensure that your website is always going to display exactly how you want it too look.
A responsive layout generally performs better than adaptive. The experts do admit that in case of some complex web applications and fields that need to be fine-turned, adaptive is the better choice then responsive. When you are able to fine-tune and customize your site layout at any resolution you can be completely sure that your embedded app or complicated order form displays perfect for both mobile and desktop.
Why Mobile Does Matter
When it all comes down to choosing responsive or adaptive for your business, it really doesn’t matter, just as long as your website has a mobile friendly page. With roughly 3 out of 5 visitors who access your site through any mobile device, your company can’t afford to miss out on the mobile traffic any longer!
For more information on which type of layout you want to go with contact Windy City Strategies for more details!