Lokion Interactive

It hap­pens almost every day. Exist­ing clients or prospects call us and say they need a mobile app. In fact, most com­pa­nies feel they can’t com­pete with­out a mobile app. At Lokion, we believe that busi­nesses can’t com­pete effec­tively with­out a com­pre­hen­sive mobile strategy.

While that strat­egy often includes an app, it almost always starts with mak­ing your web­site acces­si­ble to users from their mobile devices– and increas­ingly, the strat­egy is to begin with respon­sive web design.

Sites designed respon­sively will auto­mat­i­cally for­mat to a wide vari­ety of screen sizes, from a smart­phone to a desk­top, and any­thing in between. Nav­i­ga­tion, design and form lay­out grace­fully shift and resize with­out break­ing which ensures a site is usable and com­pelling, regard­less of the device upon which it is viewed. Respon­sive design is not a fad–it is the way web design should be done. It offers a cost-effective way for busi­nesses to get the most out of their web design effort and cre­ate effi­cien­cies for ongo­ing con­tent management.

Using respon­sive web design on your site is crit­i­cal to your busi­ness. Here’s why:

1. Mobile is no longer optional. As of Feb­ru­ary 2012, almost half (49.7%) of US mobile sub­scribers owned smart­phones, accord­ing to Nielsen. And 44% of those users access the inter­net from their mobile device accord­ing to the Pew Research Cen­ter (Aug 2011). Check your site ana­lyt­ics to see how many users are access­ing your site via a mobile device. If your site doesn’t per­form well on their device of choice, cus­tomers are likely to move on to the next site. Even if your site just went through a redesign, if cus­tomers aren’t able to suc­cess­fully use your site on their mobile device, there is still a com­pelling busi­ness case for imple­ment­ing respon­sive web redesign.
2. Apps only work on cer­tain devices and oper­at­ing sys­tems. Think about the num­ber of devices peo­ple use every day. In many liv­ing rooms you may find a net­book, an iPad (or other tablet), a smart­phone and pos­si­bly a web-enabled tele­vi­sion. Some of these devices uti­lize a mouse, some are touch-sensitive and oth­ers track motion for input. A poten­tial cus­tomer may even be using a remote con­trol to nav­i­gate through your site’s con­tent. It’s sim­ply not prac­ti­cal for most com­pa­nies to develop appli­ca­tions for every device that a cus­tomer may own. With respon­sive web design, your site becomes a flex­i­ble expe­ri­ence that tai­lors itself to what­ever device your cus­tomer chooses to use.
3. Respon­sive web design saves you time and money. A well-implemented web­site with respon­sive design can keep busi­ness costs low by lim­it­ing dupli­cate efforts and sim­pli­fy­ing long-term main­te­nance. Your site will work with mul­ti­ple devices with­out redi­rect­ing users to dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the same site (e.g. m.cnn.com vs www.cnn.com). Hav­ing con­sis­tent URLs will also give you an SEO bonus.
4. Respon­sive designs are future-proof. Given the rapid rate of change in the mobile device mar­ket, plan­ning for what’s com­ing next is dif­fi­cult. But one thing is for sure–the per­va­sive­ness of mobile devices will con­tinue to grow. In fact, Gart­ner esti­mates that by 2013, mobile phones will over­take PCs as the most com­mon web access device world­wide. Design­ing with respon­sive con­cepts and tac­tics allows you to build a site that will look good on any num­ber of devices and screen sizes…even devices that aren’t avail­able yet. By embrac­ing respon­sive design now, you make it more likely that your users will be able to view your con­tent on next month’s or next year’s must-have device.

To see a respon­sive site in action, check out a site on your desk­top PC and phone at the same time. Here are a two exam­ples, one con­tent heavy and one brand cen­tric that really show the ver­sa­til­ity of respon­sive design. To see how a site ren­ders on mul­ti­ple devices, check out this great tool.

Lokion’s site also illus­trates how pages are ren­dered dif­fer­ently based on device type. The image on the left is what you might see on a smart­phone. The cen­ter image is an exam­ple of what you might see on a tablet, and the image on the right is what the site looks like on a desk­top machine.

While you’re here, please Say Hello and let us know if we can help with your next major redesign effort.