You know the design of your website is critical to the success of your business. But with so many different terms and approaches, it can be hard to choose which one is best for your business.
That’s why it’s a good idea to let a professional web design firm help you to create the perfect site. Businesses such as Quikclicks have years of experience and excellent reputations; allowing you to focus on building the business instead of trying to understand the technological terms.
However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a basic understanding of the sites, especially for fundamentals like whether to use adaptive or responsive design.
Adaptive Design
If you opt for an adaptive design for your website then you’ll be creating multiple fixed layouts. Each of the layouts will have the same information but they will be sized differently.
It is worth noting that you can create the layouts differently, allowing you to display different information depending on the layout. But, this will mean that the site won’t look the same when accessed from different devices which could be frustrating for a customer.
When a customer visits the site it will look at the available space on the screen and select the layout which fits that screen best. Anyone resizing the browser will not affect the design of the webpage.
Responsive Design
In contrast, the responsive design web page will query the browser size and type. The response to this will allow the web page to arrange itself to fit the available space. In effect it will automatically resize to the screen, showing all the data but in a smaller format.
So, if working on a desktop and you shrink the browser size the content should shrink with it.
The great thing about responsive design is that the site looks the same regardless of which device you view it on, this makes it easy for your customer. But, you do need to have a good understanding of the customer’s needs to ensure the visual representation is at its best.
Which Is Better?
Adaptive and responsive designs both have positive attributes. In many ways responsive is the better approach as it gives consistency to the customer, which is an important consideration.
However, it can be more difficult to get right and responsive design generally loads slower than adaptive design. This means adaptive design may be your better option if you have a lot of data that needs to be shown.
It is important to be aware that an abundance of templates has emerged to make creating responsive design websites much simpler. For this reason, responsive design is becoming the most popular choice for new websites. The fact that you only need to create your layout once does make it easier to get up and running.
The key difference where adaptive design really stands out is that it is better at giving a relevant experience. The layout will be designed for the device in question, with responsive you’ll feel like you’re looking at a desktop when you’re on your mobile.
But, the time it takes to create an adaptive design, combined with the comfort of responsive sites looking the same on every device, means that responsive is currently the preferred option.
Whether this makes it the better option only time will tell.