Hot and fresh off the technology press

Organizations that don’t act may find themselves behind the curve:
You have a website! Is it ready for mobile? Is it ready for tablets – btw more than 100 million will be sold this year! Is it ready for more than 600 different devices?
Yes, indeed this is what your user expects from your web presence. The site has to adjust and even present different content depending on what device he/she uses. Just a year ago the answer was individual designs for all devices. So in essence a new development for every instance. Everyone can imagine that this meant keeping up at least two if not more sites. Very involved indeed.

Consequently, just a few months ago the newest solution was born: Responsive Design.Why is this all so important? Remember when the first iPhones came out? Everybody was really happy that we finally could view websites on our phones. So nobody was ticked off at the srcolling and zooming – we actually loved it. But only a Couple of years later consumers expect more. Scrolling and Zooming is out and the industry adjusts quickly. Suddenly subdomains with m. in front of the original url appear and depending on the device which is used, the browser dishes out the adapted version. NICE, BUT involved – plus more and more devices push into the market: Androids, Windows Phones, Samsung, LG etc. Everytime some new technology emerges, web presences have to be adjusted.

Responsive Design Desktop Size

Responsive Design Tablet Size

Responsive Design Mobile Size

The “secret”: A single website design that adjusts itself to every screen size out there. Also called Flexible Design it resembles the look of the late 90’s with their “fluid” way of displaying content. Until responsive design emerged the constantly changing text columns and images were frowned upon. The centered design was hip and thrived. Nonetheless problems with mobile devices emerged quickly and the situation was remedied by above described solution.

So here we are Responsive Design is taking the web by storm. Major players have adapted and every day more follow. In short: this is the way to go.
You can check it yourself. Goto Nike.com and resize your browser window (this is the easiest way to check whether a site is responsive). You will see that certain content disappears whiles images “magically” fall into place and navigation changes its look and feel. Use your smartphone or tablet and notice the differences.

If you have a mobile version for your site you are safe for now. On the long run the search engines are going to penalize “m. domains” by ignoring them though. So it is time to start planning and changing the programming of your website.
Ask your web designer / programmer when and how you can GO RESPONSIVE.