Responsive web design is critically important for businesses as the realm of digital real estate morphs into a miniaturized version of itself. More consumers access digital content on creative, new devices that have very different rendering aspects than traditional, full screen monitors. Businesses must place their brand messages front-facing to the public for maximum message efficiency. That place is now on the screen of smart devices that may measure as small as a one-by-one inch square. DotComWebDesign helps businesses use responsive web design to meet their goals of delivering brand messages where consumers focus their attention.

An Overview of Responsive Design

Implementing static, multiple web pages for different devices is slowly losing traction among business website owners. This makes sense considering the cost and effort required to manage multiple web presences. DotComWebDesign offers a better solution. We design single pages that reshape for viewers across multiple devices. This discipline is critically important as consumer mobile device web browsing is well on its way to dwarfing traditional, large screen browsing. These responsive web pages rank more favorably under Google’s new mobile-centric algorithms. DotComWebDesign’s responsive web pages reduce the number of digital assets businesses must maintain, while increasing the efficiency of their communications.

Responsive Web Design: an Evolving Discipline

The concept of responsive web page design has emerged for over a decade. Leading technology publications tout responsive design as the next evolutionary step in website development. The discipline is quickly becoming a best practice design feature for competitive businesses. It involves web architecture that flexes, and resizes, for different devices and dynamic content that fades in and out as users navigate through a website.

A page built to these standards will change its layout right before a viewer’s eyes as they resize their browser. Another major advantage of this technology is that its very nature creates congruence with backend systems; operating only one website eliminates the need to aggregate analytics from different web assets. This technology represents an evolutionary improvement of basic digital marketing channel architecture.

The Fluid Grid Concept

One of the three main components of responsive web design is fluid grids. These web page elements render in size with a measurement of percentage–not a static fixed width. A fluid grid flows naturally as users resize, or use different, browser windows. This construction virtually eliminates the need for users to resize a page to view its contents. The fluid grid concept can increase page stickiness of consumers who do not know how, or do not want, to resize content to make it viewable. At DotComWebDesign, we realize it takes more than fluid grids to make a web page responsive across different platforms and also design how content flows as it reshapes. Additionally, DotComWebDesign designs and tests fluid grid pages to make sure they render correctly across all devices.

Flexible Images for Responsive Web Design

Another component of responsive web design is flexible images. Images captivate the minds of consumers and makes content easier to absorb. When web designers incorporate images into a responsively designed web page, the image must also have a fluid construction that keeps its aspect ratio in line with the page’s flexible content. We also restrict images to certain segments of the web page. DotComWebDesign take a business’s powerful images and makes them work in a fluid responsive web page environment. The result is images that support content across any device and a clean, comprehensive page layout that engages consumers.

Responsive Design and Media Queries

The third major component of responsive web design is media queries. Even though businesses only need one responsive web page, there are some web page elements that are not transferable across all devices. Web page designers use the power of media queries to alleviate this problem. It renders content to correlate to specific device characteristics such as screen resolution. Responsive web pages also need opt in overlays that function within the confines of a device’s browser elements.

Media queries also provide a bridge that adapts content to other presentation mediums such as smart television and projection devices. Responsive web design’s complexity is astounding in contrast to the simplicity, and brevity, of its appearance. Using media queries, DotComWebDesign makes responsive web pages that function as intended across all devices.

Mobile First Builds

Responsive web design requires an approach to web page design that is counterintuitive to static page design practices. When building responsive pages, instead of starting with a business’s flagship digital asset, a full screen sized home page, we start with the smallest format a business’s consumers use to view content. As a business’s digital assets progress in size, we use media queries to instruct the web page to add features that function properly on each device.

This concept is of growing importance as consumers adopt the use of devices that have shrinking screen real estate, and smaller devices are rapidly outpacing their full screen counterparts. We understand businesses must place their brand message in front of the widest part of their target demographic. DotComWebDesign creates web presences that speak to a business’s audience where consumers focus their attention.

Non-Fluid Banner Advertisements and Videos

Within the–still emerging–discipline of responsive web design, businesses face challenges when incorporating monetized or video objects into web pages. Presently, many banner advertising networks and video providers serve static content. This lack of conformity can ruin a responsive web page’s entire flow. DotComWebDesign helps businesses incorporate responsive, web friendly third-party platforms and applications. We have the expertise to help businesses maximize the results of monetization and video resources incorporated into responsive web designs.

Responsive web design is the go-to architecture businesses deploy to reduce overhead and maintain brand exposure. This fledgling practice presents corporate messages across multiple devices with a single access point. No matter how consumers access content, business can now effectively create exposure for their brand. DotComWebDesign molds businesses’ content heavy pages and disseminates them to audiences in simple, easy to digest marketing messages. With responsive web development architecture, users do not feel burdened by consuming a large amount of information because businesses present it to them in a way they can absorb naturally.