Good question. Well, let’s start by describing what ‘responsive’ means. When web designers talk about responsive design, they are talking about a layout that ‘responds’ to the size of the device it is being viewed on. So, if you view the site on a 5” smartphone screen, it will look different to when it is viewed on a 27” widescreen desktop monitor.

When smartphone browsers where in their infancy, you may remember that some sites claiming to be ‘mobile-friendly’ where really difficult to read because although, technically, the page size shrunk to fit the screen, it meant that everything on that page became so small that you couldn’t read it anyway! Worse still, in order to read it you had to zoom the screen which then meant you were scrolling about all over the place, horizontally and vertically. Not a nice experience.

This is a really important subject and worthy of careful consideration when thinking about your website and it’s content.

1. Mobile-Friendly Design

This is no no longer optional. Full stop. Towards the end of 2016, global mobile usage exceeded desktop for the first time. Put simply, this means that if your website is not responsive (works on all devices) you will be left behind. This is especially important when you consider that in April 2015, Google made mobile-friendly design a ranking indicator. The UK results are a little different but still nearly half of internet browsing happens on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). This is so important that, at MPS Creative, all new designs are mobile-friendly to the extent that this is the first consideration when planning the layout. It probably goes without saying that I no longer design sites that are non mobile-friendly.

Yes. Definitely. Of course you do. Absolutely.

Well, you would probably expect me to say that I guess… after all, I design them for a living!

Seriously though, it is a valid question and one that comes up a fair amount these days given the proliferation of online platforms available, most of which you could utilise for your business in one way or another.