Everything you need to know about Responsive Web Design

To design a website that looks good and functions properly, it must adapt to the numerous screen sizes used by different smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers, etc. A solid business case can be made for the necessity to optimize for mobile devices given that individuals currently up to 4.2 hours per day using their smartphones and the utmost of online traffic originates for mobile devices which excludes tablets. The whole huge range of smartphone and tablet screen sizes and resolutions is still missed by a “mobile version” of a website. To develop a single website that can change on its own, responsive web design comes into play. 

What is Responsive Web Design?
Concerning screen size, platform, and orientation, responsive web design advocates that design and development should adapt to the user’s environment and behavior. A responsive web design automatically adapts the information and elements, ensuring visitors see what they need to view – no cropped images or missing pieces without the need to develop separate websites for mobile or for any of the other screen sizes applicable today.  

What are the 3 Components of Responsive Web Design?
People often wonder about how to make a responsive website! To this query, the answer lies in the involvement of three components in the design to help it respond to various devices with the optimized viewing experience. Those components include the following:

1. Media queries
According to the screen type, kind of device, showing browser, or even device orientation, media queries are the type of filters applied to CSS. The goal of a media query is to enable many layouts utilizing the same content blocks, each one tailored to the specifications of the target device in terms of size or features. A media query is designed to adhere to a rule based on the minimum or maximum width parameters, together with additional elements like browser, resolution, and orientation. 

2. Fluid Grids
Using an algorithm, a responsive website normalizes the user interface elements to the pixel count and screen size. A “liquid layout” which does this by taking into consideration each element according to the proportion it occupies in the width, adds up a content block, an image, and the padding between and surrounding blocks to 100% of the width. 

3. Adaptable visuals 
To represent layout proportions and spacing, images should be created in relative units called “effective pixels” which correspond to “perceived size”. Elements should have a 4 epx base unit for the design to scale to a whole number whenever the fluid grid is employed. 

Why Responsive Design is Important for Business?
Responsive web design profits developers, designers, users, and most importantly businesses in the following ways:

1.Cost Effective 
A responsive web design allows for a single creation as opposed to building websites for various screen sizes. A/B testing, updates, and the emergence of additional screen sizes all result in long-term cost reductions in addition to the initial ones. 

2.Enhances user’s experience 
Today users anticipate a seamless, consistent experience across mediums. For instance, in retail, a customer may presume their journey on a mobile device and complete it on a laptop or desktop computer. Users may expect a consistent experience from a responsive web design across all interfaces. Additionally, responsive web design guarantees that the design always appears at its finest- no zooming, pinching, or needless scrolling to browse.  

3.Improves SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Responsive web design eliminates the SEO related risks and also improves SEO associated with separate mobile websites:

a)No duplicate content penalty 
Businesses ran the risk of duplicate content fines by offering a mobile website version. Google bots are unable to determine which version of the website needs to be indexed or monitored for link metrics. This danger is reduced by having only one version of the website, which enables web teams to concentrate all of their SEO efforts on just one particular website.  

b)Quickly loads the website
Google uses over 200 ranking factors including a site’s responsiveness and speed (as indicators of how user-friendly it is). Responsive websites frequently load more quickly than websites that are optimized for mobile. Implementing concepts like “performance budgets,” which include compression and adaptive images, can further improve responsive web designs. 

4.Easier maintenance and development 
As already mentioned, creating a single version of a website will always take less time than creating many versions of the same website, even with the additional challenge of making sure the three elements of flexible web design are appropriately applied. This is true for both marketing and development teams; whose responsibility is to make sure that every iteration of a website looks and functions well additionally has the most recent changes and information.

5.Lower bounce rate 
When a website does not work well for tablet and mobile users, bounce rates will be a constant and significant issue regardless of where it ranks in search results. When mobile sites offer too little content, or if their offerings are too different from those found on desktop versions, high bounce rates can occur. High bounce rates may indicate inadequate content on a website, which may cause a drop in rankings if Google interprets them as a sign of poor quality.

6.Increase conversion rates 
Furthermore, a mobile-friendly website can increase those sought-after conversation rates from all of the mobile users in the world, as well as provide all the SEO benefits. Why? Users will not be able to convert if a website does not work effectively on mobile or tablet devices. Is it still possible for a user to convert when they are required to do more work than usual? There is a high possibility, but it is less likely to convert! 

Conclusion 
In this competitive market, designing mobile devices is more than necessary for success in today’s market. It may be time to consider responsive web design if your website isn’t currently mobile or if you have seen the high maintenance costs associated with a mobile site that isn’t adaptable to a sufficient range of devices and screen types.