What is Responsive Website Design?

A responsive website describes a website which changes its layout depending on the size of the device screen on which it is being viewed.

This allows one website to be easily viewed across all devices from the largest desktop computer screen to the smallest smart phone.  This concept was originally being developed approximately two years ago but only in the past six months or so has it become common practice as the technology is now stable and is supported across the vast majority of device operating systems and browsers.  

Responsive website design eliminates the costly option of having two separate websites (one for mobile and one for computers) or the more common option of simply using your desktop optimised website across all devices.  Most recent website designs will display reasonably well on smaller screens as most devices do a good job of scaling the site down to fit on the screen - but the most common issue with this is that the menu system will be quite small to read and may require the user to zoom in and out to read and navigate the website.  The most basic use of a responsive website is that it rearranges the menu to a vertical layout and hides the menu when not being used - and the text size does not greatly reduce so that your website user can comfortably read your site without zooming in nor scrolling horizontally.

DRAWBACKS OF RESPONSIVE DESIGN

The only drawbacks to responsive websites are that your old content may not be responsive in itself - if you use a lot of tables with set widths then these will hold the website width and not allow the site to collapse as it is designed to do.  To work around this we typically set the table widths to a percentage rather than a fixed width so that the tables can scale to fit.  

The other minor issue is that some older browsers don't support responsive design - but statistics show that this is only about 2% of Australian internet users.  With mobile phones and smaller tablets becoming such a popular way to use the internet we think that responsive design is the way that websites will head in the next few years.


RESPONSIVE DESIGN FOR YOUR WEBSITE

Our recently redesigned website at www.chilliwebsites.com.au is a responsive design - if you view this site on a computer and then compare it on a phone or tablet you will see how this works.

We have just also launched our first responsive template design for our customers to use.  On our website you can navigate to See Our Designs and the first design on the page is a responsive design.  We invite you to try this template out with your current website content.  You can try this without risk of losing your existing site.  To do this simply follow our tutorial on changing your template (tutorial is here - www.chilliwebsites.com/admintools/faqs_detail.asp?id=edit&userid=581 ) - you'll be able to preview your existing website content in the new template by clicking on Live Site in your Admin System without affecting your website at your own domain (i.e. www.yourbusiness.com.au).  

If you decide that you want to change the template permanently simply let us know via email and we'll make the quick change for you.  If you have any questions please let us know via reply email - we can assist with tweaking your content to work better on a responsive design if necessary.


Of course if you don't currently have your website with Chilli Websites please take this opportunity to quickly setup a free trial and test our new responsive template design.