This is the “Post-PC Era” and more and more people view websites on small portable devices like smart phones and IPads. In fact, it is predicted that as soon as 2014, more websites will be viewed on portable devices than on desktops. That’s why your website needs to be as easy to read and navigate on these smaller devices. That’s where Responsive Design comes in.

With Responsive Design, websites are built so they respond to whatever device they are viewed on. So your website looks like it is designed for the Apple 5 when it is viewed on that phone. And it will look like it was designed for your desktop when it is viewed on your desktop computer. Before this, you typically needed one set of files for the desktop version and a different set for the mobile version(s). So it was usually complicated and expensive to maintain, if you had a mobile version at all.

Another way of illustrating this is to look at a site like www.bostonglobe.com. The Boston Globe is one of the few sites already using Responsive Design technology.  On your desktop, you see three columns. On say, an IPad, it is reduced to two columns and on your smart phone, it becomes a single column. It intelligently repositions and changes the presentation of its content depending on screen size.

This is trickier to do than may sound. We have spent months getting it down. It is important because it will no longer be necessary to create different sites for different devices. One design will fit all. Furthermore, since there is only one set of files for the site, the search engines don’t get confused with where to send people searching for your site.

At Nexxite, all our new websites will be built this way. Retrofitting an existing site with this technology can be a challenge, but it may be worth doing in some cases. We have other ways of creating mobile versions as well, for existing sites. If you would like to discuss your options, please contact us.