Responsive Web Design - Pros & Cons

Responsive Design:

Responsive web design is making headlines every day. The year of 2013 is predicted to be the year of responsive designs. Most of the well-known brands & companies like Microsoft, Starbucks, Sony, Disney and more have chosen to implement responsive website design. So what’s matter? You must ask yourself the essential question, “Is responsive design right for me?”

Here are some Pros and Cons of using responsive design.

PROS:

• Less Maintenance: Responsive design allows you to create one site that is responsive to all of the different sized screens. This method differs from the well known current practice of creating completely different sites for each screen size. Because responsive design has all of the code for all of the sites in one central area, & it is easy to make adjustments with responsive design as compare to go into each separate site to make the necessary changes.

• Improved SEO: With a responsive design website, you have only one URL, which is not the case if you create each site separately. It will not dilute your SEO with all of the different URL’s; it will help you to improve your SEO.

• Better User Experience: The responsive design is designed to maximize the user’s experience. Responsive sites are much easier to navigate and use sites that are customized for the device they are using.

• Social Sharing: If someone on a desktop computer shares a link to a website that doesn’t have responsive design with someone having a mobile device, surely the mobile user will not get the same experience as the desktop user had. Mobile user will open up the link to a website that was made for a desktop and not for mobiles. The Responsive design solves this problem. With responsive design the link open on the mobile phone would become responsive to that device.

• Web Analytics/ Tracking: As mentioned before too, with responsive design we use a single URL. A single URL makes tracking your website much easier and eliminates the need of analyzing the data produced from different URL’s

• New Devices: New devices with different screen sizes are continually being created. After having a responsive site you do not need to worry about creating a whole new website every time a new screen-sized device is introduced into the market.

• Google Endorsed It: “Google recommends webmasters follow the industry best practice of using responsive website design.” (https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/)

CONS:

• Technical Difficulty: Responsive design is very new and still in development phase. It has its own rules and techniques. Responsive design will continue to new development and adjust as it is used more and more.

• Implementation: Implementation can take longer than you expect. Because of the concept is new and there is still little familiarity with problems you may encounter.

• Limited Resources: As mentioned above, this is a new concept. It can be difficult for you to find someone who can offer you the option of responsive design.

• Load Time:  Images commonly are just scaled down simply, and not to be resized. This negatively impacts the load time of a page.