At present, the digital and online marketing industries are swarming with new innovative trends for website design and web development. Most of the web designers and developers are increasingly facing questions about the relevancy of responsive and mobile design approach by their clients. This dilemma has affected the decision makers of small business enterprises and entrepreneurs as well. Mobile and responsive web design are known to influence the inbound traffic to your website and lead conversion, besides building brand credibility and awareness. This is precisely the reason for confusion regarding which design element between mobile web and responsive design to choose for your online business.
Selecting the right design for your website is an important task, and needs to be carefully done after conducting some extensive brainstorming, market research and understanding both the requirements and behavior of your target audience. Through this article, I will try to compile the key differences between mobile web design and responsive web design in terms of several vital aspects like input cost, navigation, user experience and overall viability. Let’s cover each one at a time.
Initial Cost Comparison between Mobile Web and Responsive Design:
Entrepreneurs and startup businesses thrive on their online websites, and usually operate on a tight initial budget. Therefore, input costs towards the design and web development should be considered cautiously. Mobile web design is comparatively simpler to implement and needs fewer resources than their responsive equivalent. On the other hand, websites with responsive design are expensive to create and need considerable initial costs, manpower, coding and testing builds. Further, this design feature is better suited for businesses that operate over large budgets and audience. Experts have opined that small businesses should stick to mobile design for their websites on account of their negligible input costs, since when the accounts bloom they could always upgrade to a responsive website.
Page Loading Time and User Experience:
Mobile web design is not much resource intensive, and these websites load much quicker than their responsive variants. This is due to their simple source code and page loading efficiency optimized for smartphones and tablets. Responsive websites are slow because of their complicated source code ad nature, but are better suited for use on desktops, laptops, mobiles and tablets. Further, mobile design approach caters to mostly smartphone and tablet users, which thereby reflect their inability to provide what responsive websites offer towards user experience. Hence, responsive is the clear winner in terms of providing better user experience and clearer brand narrative.
Flexibility, Maintenance and Robustness:
Responsive websites involve lesser maintenance and redesign costs as compared to their mobile design alternatives. This is because the mobile website design trends are continuously evolving, and therefore these websites need to be redesigned and updated regularly. In contrast to them, responsive websites need hardly any additional maintenance costs and don’t require redesigning over shifting trends in the web design market. Further, responsive web design could be used anywhere without compromising on the user experience, which incidentally isn’t the same case with mobile websites.
Content Design:
Mobile websites need optimized and especially content. They target specific requirements of their visitors, and according to that content is created. This content could be either textual or visual or both, but is required to be optimized for cellular devices. Responsive web design automatically adjust its content according to the device or browser they are used on, which make them the ideal option for websites that are to be used across all devices and platforms. A web development company could design an effective content strategy for both mobile and responsive web design, but this something that should be done after thorough market research and competition analysis.
Conclusion:
Evidently, both responsive and mobile web design have their perks and benefits. However, if you are clear about business goals and expectancy from your website then the choice should be comparatively easy. For small business and startup organizations, mobile web design seems more practical and easier to operate; whereas there is no doubt that responsive website is the future of web design and development. Putting online a responsive website may be costly at the onset, but could prove to be a better decision over mobile websites, and should return positive Return on Investment (RoI) and quicker goal recovery.
This article is written by Aman Prateek. He is a freelance article writer who writes on web design tips, new ideas related to mobile and best companies. He recommends the services offered by ITChimes for your business project. The company offers quality services at best prices.
