In the Age of Mobile, Responsive is King

Web development has come a long way since I started back in 2005. Back then everything was either about saving speed so images and such had to be very small or you went the opposite direction and did something crazy with Flash. I miss the wild west days of Flash where anything was on the table, it just depended how crazy you could get with it. RIP Flash, you were weird and awesome. But I digress.

Since then internet speeds and connectivity has changed the web development game and so has the rise of mobile. In 2013 only 1.62% of web traffic was mobile. Now jump ahead to 2019 and 52.2% of all web traffic is mobile. That is a jump of 222% in the last 7 years. Mobile has overtaken all other types of traffic to become the primary way people visit sites. That will only continue to grow but it is very important to remember that 52.2% may be the most but it isn’t by much. There are still many people who will visit your website that uses their desktop. Just like a few years ago web developers were trying their best to make sure when a website was built mobile wasn’t neglected, we are now trying to convince people not to abandon desktop. Both are important ways to communicate with your audience.

That’s why Responsive design is so important. Those numbers from above matter because 47.8% of people are still using desktops to look at your site and that is a lot of people. Even digging deeper into the mobile crowd you will see they are using multitudes of devices with different displays. You have small phones, giant ones, tablets, phablets and everything in between. It is vital that everyone who visits your website is given a first class experience, and that’s what responsive design is all about.

So what is Responsive Design? Well it’s right there in the name. It is a design that responds to the size of device you are viewing the website on. If you have a huge monitor that takes up your whole desk, the site will look as polished as it does on an old iPhone. The design adjusts to fit a more horizontal or vertical view. When looking at the numbers of how people actually surf the web it shows we can’t abandon desktop design just as we couldn’t neglect mobile design back in the day. Your end-user is the most important thing to think about when building your site and it doesn’t make sense to have 47.8% of them get a subpar experience.

Statistics courtesy: https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/mobile-desktop-internet-usage-statistics

Photo by Domenico Loia on Unsplash

Written By:

Derek Olson

Senior Artist

I work in the web development and video production teams at tdg. I do a little bit of everything from web coding to graphic design, animation, and video. I work on a variety of projects both large and small. I am also an illustrator, theater director, playwright, and executive director for a local community theater.