When it comes to creating and maintaining websites, there are a lot of aspects to think about, as we've uncovered in previous posts. Two of these examples are the methods of building your website, either using a DIY builder or through custom designs, followed by an in-depth scope of both of these different website creations are whether your website utilizes a responsive design.
Before we explore further into this topic, let us first explain what responsive design is and then elaborate on why it is so important to have a mobile-friendly, responsive site going into 2021.
What is Responsive Design and Why Choose It?
In early web development, website design was for desktop computers monitor sizes only. What that means to you is these original websites contained intentional blueprints of having a layout large enough for the font to be readable on a computer monitor screen size. With the changing of times comes newer technology and screen widths of laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.
Responsive design is a smart way of creating a single website that serves all devices with the same code that flexes and adjusts for that screen size. While responsive sites are increasing in circulation, you may still be encountering non-responsive sites in which the text or images so tiny you need to use your thumb and finger to 'pinch' the screen to zoom in or out to read the content. Luckily this is becoming something of the past—at least it should be.
Responsive design is enabling us to move away from having more than one version of your website to appease the users picking up their phones to view your web pages. Without responsive pages, webmasters were using mobile site applications for DIY sites or tirelessly creating entire custom pages of websites specifically for mobile use. These 'mobile websites' use different CNAME and A records, in combination with custom coding, for detecting if visitors were using a mobile device and, in turn, redirecting that traffic to a mobile version of the site on an entirely different domain zone file. Not only did this barely satisfy the mobile requirement, but it also splits your SEO in two—one for your main 'desktop' site and the other for mobile users.
To make matters worse, the coding addition for detecting mobile visitors also force redirects traffic to see the correct site version for the visitor. These redirects would either load a mobile add-on or a mobile theme and, unfortunately, are not always quick. Due to the slower load times for the scripts and pages, it also ends up affecting page views and the patience of the customer. Mobile side-sites and themes generally weren't very appealing for the traffic seeing it as is, but it also isn't appealing for your wallet, either.