What is responsive design and why is it important?

Responsive design is a set of tools and techniques that “responds” to the device that is requesting the web page and presents the best possible layout for that screen size. The user is presented with an optimal experience when visiting your site on a phone, tablet, laptop or desktop.

A dozen years ago, we designed web sites to be “fixed width” or “stretchy”. This technology is light years beyond that.

There are so many hundreds of screen sizes out there today, it’s not feasible to have a design for every size screen. Designing responsive means you can adjust not only the size and layout of content, but also change the content that is displayed too. For instance, you may still have flash on your desktop site, but with responsive you can present something built in HTML5 instead. Or, a navigation bar on a desktop may become a drop-down on a mobile device.

Responsive design can also be applied to email templates. Many people check their email on their mobile device first, and with email the first impression is everything.

If you are considering a web redesign, let Starmark help make it responsive so it will be the best experience for your users no matter what device they are using.