The shift to responsive design is palpable. Some brands did it two years ago and some are doing it now. Those that aren’t are actively thinking about it. And if they’re not, they probably should be. But how do you make sure you get it right?
With mobile and tablet usage continuing to rise and technology constantly evolving, it’s clear that responsive design and improved user experience will remain high on the agenda for digital marketers in 2014.
By the end of 2013, there were approximately 7bn mobile devices in use around the globe. Smartphone and tablet screens are constantly evolving and screens have been all sorts of shapes and sizes for some time. Both LG and Samsung, which already has 26 screen sizes in its range, are developing smartphones with flexible, curved screens. Furthermore, customers have turned predominantly to tablets and smartphones to engage in online shopping. IBM reported a 42 per cent increase in mobile e-commerce traffic in December 2013 compared to December 2012, accounting for more than 58 per cent of all traffic.
With this retail picture in mind, any brand with any element of a transaction or booking, such as travel, leisure, transport or charity, simply must ensure its site is responsive. Doing it results in increases in sales and engagement and reductions in resource cost. Not doing it results in dwindling sales and engagement, making the case for responsive virtually a no brainer. For brands with ad revenue models, the developments in mobile advertising mean they are now able to capitalise on the swing to mobile devices by creating a responsive site that increases page views and consequently ad impressions.
So if we all agree responsive is imperative, how do we know we’re getting it right?
The key to success here is in the methodology and approach to responsive design. Consideration of all screen sizes, from the smallest phone to the biggest TV is essential but most of all, you must start with the smallest first; a mobile first approach.
It can be relatively easy to make a site responsive in a way that ultimately does not satisfy the end user. All too often when a website is “made responsive”, as it gets smaller, access to content is stripped due to the site designer’s perceived view of what is valuable. However, any good User Experience expert will tell you that while your primary goal may be to make a sale, as tempting as it might be to remove other navigation in favour of a big “book now” button, the user may well already be your rail passenger on a delayed service in need of information about alternative routes and trains. He’s not your main target but he is a valid user, and so it becomes a conversation about prioritising content, not sacrificing it.
Mobile First means putting a great deal of effort into User Experience right up front and taking a flexible and fluid development approach: ensuring images and layouts are not restricted to specific dimensions but change seamlessly as the size and shape of the device change. The way to achieve this is to start with the mobile view and progressively enhance the experience as the screen gets bigger, adding in larger or more detailed imagery, more text, video and so on. Additional resources are loaded as needed, rather than loaded and not used. This means you have light pages that are quick to load, thereby reducing bounce-rate and increasing page views. This prototyping and mobile first approach means you end up with a fluid and robust site that works easily on any device, rather than one that starts with a limited number of popular screen sizes and therefore ends up with some clunky viewing experiences across all.
So whether you’re going responsive for the first time, or fixing precisely the kinds of problem your responsive design is now encountering, make sure your agency knows its onions - this is a highly technical discipline with seemingly small nuances making big differences to bottom line numbers. Remember, the web is fluid and your site needs to be too.
The level and speed of the increase in mobile usage is staggering and 2013 saw some marketers scrambling to keep up. But responsive design will soon become the accepted norm, with new challenges from areas such as wearable technology. So, if brands are to make the most of every current opportunity, it is vital that that they deliver an excellent user experience on all devices for all communications.
By Brían Taylor, Digital MD at Jaywing.
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