The mobile web has changed the scenario of how we previously used to sell or buy online. With tablets and smartphone, the internet of today has revolutionized. In this era, now if you want to convert customers online, make sure that your website performs perfectly on these three channels; smartphone, tablet and desktop.
This is what a responsive web design and adaptive layout offer to web business owners, an effective visibility on all screen sizes. But if these two processes give the same thing, then what is an ideal option for a startup business to choose, that is not only under the budget but also increases the business reach.
This article aims to offer an understanding of both adaptive layout and responsive web design- and also does a brief comparison of both so that you can decide which of these solutions is best for today’s web.
What Is Adaptive Layout?
As mobile web went mainstream, the adaptive layout became a common mode of web design and development that enabled a website to serve to mobile and tablet visitors. However, this technique was more complex when building a website from scratch. This is the reason most of the business owners choose adaptive technique only to retrofit an existing normal website for mobile. In Adaptive layout technique, developers used to target commonly three resolution viewports to retrofit a website. This process also involved pre-designing analytics to track down which resolutions gave a larger number of visitors to a website. This allowed the error free completion of development on every viewport.
Designing and developing for more than three viewports was also a hassle because on each viewport the website requires a different design and development. Although, many complex web application use the adaptive technique but its complexity was the reason this technique couldn’t catch- and later responsive web design technique became dominant.
What Is Responsive Design? web design
The responsive web design & development technique is today’s catch-all term when it comes to making a website look great on either a smartphone, tablet or desktop. It is the solution for future that has less sophistication, high scalability and seamless fluid functionality. With designers there are different ways of designing a responsive website, some suggest to begin with in-browser designing, while some suggest to design and develop the website at the same time.
The biggest selling point of responsive is that you use all the viewport resolutions in consideration, but you don’t have to design differently for all of them. You can test a single design on all the viewports and then fix the breakage with the help of media queries. Pre-design analytics is also good for this strategy but as your website will be serving to all the resolutions, you can rest assured that your mobile visitors will see your offerings in a creative way. The Ideal way of starting a responsive website design is to do that from a high-resolution device that lets you catch and test all the viewports.
What To Choose For Your Website
If your goal is to have an exceptionally well performing website for smartphones & tablets, low resolution and high-resolution, then Responsive web design is by far the lightest and the most reliable technique with which you can do that. However, if you plan on introducing a complex web application to the web with known target markets and channels than you can also go for an adaptive technique. That being said, some web owner who are not only backing a web application but a platform as well, go for a custom and special needs responsive website design that works efficiently in meeting their demands: As an example consider DezineGeek’s Linked Up Learning website that houses both an application and a web presence.