Once upon a time, one of the biggest design challenges that developers encountered while building a website was optimizing content for different desktop-based browsers. With the advent of today’s mobile technology, the focus of website design has shifted dramatically to accommodate the myriad of different smartphones and tablets on the market. Millions of people access the web via their mobile devices daily, and that number is growing; studies indicate that mobile browsing is poised to become even more prevalent than desktop-based web viewing in the next couple of years. If your website is more than three years old, or if you have yet to redesign it to make it mobile-friendly, you are probably missing out on a massive and ever-growing segment of your potential viewing audience.
Developing a Responsive Website
As technology evolves, websites must adapt. As you begin to think about website redesign, is important to remember that one cannot realistically expect certain devices or programs to dominate the game forever. For example, Microsoft FrontPage was once an extremely popular web-editing program; today, it is unsupported. Those who have failed to update their FrontPage sites now have pages that take way too long to load and are often chock full of errors. Furthermore, search engines respond far less favorably to older or outdated code, meaning your site may all but disappear from the search results list.
Similarly, creating an “iPhone website” may seem like a savvy decision now, but approaching the design process from this standpoint means that you are boxing yourself in to accommodate just one device. The solution: developing what is known as a “responsive” website design. Coding a site to respond to the differences in platforms, screen sizes, and overall functionality between desktops, tablets, and smartphones means that your site can essentially optimize itself on a case-by-case basis. Along with responsive design comes “lean coding”—streamlining the amount of code utilized in order to enhance speed. After all, if your website takes more than 2-3 seconds to load, statistics indicate that you are losing viewers.
Moving Into the Future
When it comes to technology, the only constant we can expect is rapid change. A good rule of thumb is to redesign your website about every three years or so to ensure you or your company stays fresh, functional, and truly accessible for every user. Enlisting the services of a professional website design and development company that specializes in responsive site formatting can be an extraordinarily valuable investment.
HostandStore Can Help
If your website is dated or suffers from any of the problems described here, we can help resolve them and make your website accessible to as many people and devices as possible. We practice a mobile-ready approach to development and incorporate responsive web design into every design we produce. Contact us today to learn more about the benefits of modern mobile-ready and responsive web designs.
