Most people reading this will either have a smart phone, tablet device or Internet television, or will at least be familiar with such gadgets. If not, dust off those 70’s beige tweeds and come join us here in the noughties.

Whilst it is great (for consumers) to have the Internet along with all of its swathes of information and web applications, it does pose its problems to designers and developers, potentially doubling design and development time. This, however is great for designers wallets as it could effectively double their invoices for each project.

The question to you, as a business owner, is whether or not your company needs to invest in “responsive design”. What I would advise, to anyone considering their next big web project, is to truly understand your audience before answering such a question. You can easily get access to some key statistics through free tools such as Google Analytics. From there you can see how many mobile visitors you have to your site, plus some other crucial info such as which browsers are being used to view your site, plus which countries are surfing your site.

If you have the stats to hand and all signs point to the need for a responsive design, well then it may be time to take that next step.

There have been various approaches to the idea of responsive design. From the one web approach — where the site remains consistent across all devices, but merely resizes/removes certain elements from the desktop version of the site; to the multi-site approach — whereby there is a mobile site, and a desktop site, which deliver the content perceivably required based on the device (ie.  a mobile site for a pizzeria may just cut to the chase and show you directions to their nearest restaurant along with the order number).

Some take the approach of mobile first, others work from the desktop down. Which is right for you will depend entirely on your budget and your audience. If you want to know more or think this might be the kind of thing your business needs, why not make an enquiry?