A responsive website, as opposed to a non-responsive website, is one which shifts its layout and elements to automatically fit the device on which it is being viewed. You may notice that with older sites, the text is too small, or items run on the edge of the page. Images do not scale on non-responsive websites either, or they scale incorrectly and become difficult to see clearly.
Any website owner whos site is obsolete by virtue of display problems caused by old coding methods can benefit from making their website become responsive. A company who currently has no website at all, but which is looking to develop an online presence, should absolutely demand that their web design company create and implement a responsive design.
The reasons why you should bother with responsive website design are based simply around the fact that potential customers will view the domain on different devices, each with different resolutions and sizes. A fully responsive website is made with this in mind, you will lose customers if they cannot easily read the information you are trying to convey. In addition, search engines such as google may give a slight preference to well designed websites which respond automatically to the size of the viewport - this could mean more visitors and sales for your business.
Here is a small checklist of topics which are relevant to programming a responsive website.
For existing and brand new websites, it is important to understand that the features and functionality, such as scaling, re-positioning, font resizing and all other aspects which affect responsiveness, are coding (programming) and design issues. There is no realistic way for a person without developer skills to change the code of an existing site and expect it to respond to different devices correctly. Equally, coding is required from the start for new websites - small screens tend to be laid out first, moving upwards in size - we call this approach Mobile First.
There are various technologies currently used to achieve a website which responds well to device characteristics. These include HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Javascript to name a few. They are actual programming languages or libraries and can take time to learn and master. An understanding of user experience (UX) and user interfaces (UI) aids with the process of design and implementation.
Old websites which do not react to the screen size can not be converted without knowledge of website development. However if this is not an issue, then an existing or older site lends itself very well to a re-design (although the source code is rendered virtually useless in most cases). This is because the data or information within the website is already present and therefore simply needs placing into a new responsive template which may be off the shelf or custom written. There might be a few hurdles to overcome during this process, but generally speaking, an old to new site conversion is less work than the creation of a brand new website.
Whether you are looking for a new development or trying to find out how to get an existing site brought up to speed with modern design and responsive functionality / behaviour, Photon Flux can help. We make websites from the ground up and do all the hard work for you, for conversions - we can take your existing information and use it to create a completely restructured and compliant layout
Each project is addressed on its individual merit - but if you set aside a budget of between £20 and £50 per page (the more pages we do, the less each costs, then you will be fairly close. Also, if we are talking about an existing website, the costs will be lower due to less work being needed on the content gathering.
We can start working on your website as soon as you get in touch with us. Initially we will talk about your current content if you have any, or new content if applicable. Once we have established what you need, we will schedule the work and have it done for you extremely fast.
