In this article, I’ll be discussing the reasons and purposes of building a Responsive Webpage.
Why Responsive Webpage?
#1. Mobile Usage Is On The Rise
Currently, most adults own a smartphone and 60% of all website traffic is from mobile devices. In fact, there are currently more mobile devices on earth than the number of humans alive.
And every month mobile usage continues to grow, so there will be a potential growth of prospects and customers to view your website from mobile devices. But if their viewing and interacting experience are poor, they’ll be more likely to visit a competitor’s site.
#2. Social Media Mobile Visitors Increases
Over 60% of social media consumption now happens on mobile devices, so sharing links from social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram to your website will attract more traffic and viewing of your website from mobile devices. So if you plan to have a social marketing strategy, and hoping to leverage social content sharing, GO RESPONSIVE!
#3. Responsive Sites Improve SEO Rankings
Responsive development is Google’s recommended approach for mobile web design. Per Google, responsive websites will perform better in search rankings because they provide a better user experience than sites that are not mobile-friendly. Additionally, Google prefers responsive sites that use single URLs than different URLs of separate mobile versions of websites.
#4. Responsive Designs Adapt Different Devices’ Size
This is a simple and clear statement. Responsive Web Design is the way to go if you want your website to look great through any screen. Not just smartphones and tablets, in the future there’ll be smartwatches, AR/VR, and whatever new devices pop up for internet viewing. Responsive web design and development will still work for them.
#5. A Better Experience in Bathroom
Finally, the most disturbing stat about the growth of mobile usage:【75% of Americans bring their phones to the bathroom!】
That’s certainly gross but somehow interesting, it may also be an indicator of the downfall of mankind, but it is the fact. And if people are going to browse from the place you do excretion, you can at least provide them with a better and smoother user experience.
Development Tool?
Speaking about Responsive Webpage, it’s hard to not discussing the development tools. There are now several choices out there, such as Webflow, Zeplin, pxCode, etc. So I’ll be trying to analyze the Pros & Cons of these Development tools in a short words.
#1. Webflow
It provides website building and hosting, their online visual editor platform allows users to design, build, and launch websites. Therefore, you can literally design, build, and launch responsive websites — all visually in Webflow.
But the downside is that it all starts from scratch, therefore Developers/Designers will face limitation during the design stage. Of course, it takes quite a long time to finish the editing process. But the best thing about Webflow, it is free forever.
#2. Zeplin
Different than Webflow, Zeplin requires you to import your design files for development. Zeplin connected space for product teams, handoff designs, and style guides with accurate specs, assets, code snippets — automatically. But if you ever experienced it, you’ll probably agree that Handoff is a very time-consuming way to build a Responsive Webpage.
While Zeplin has many helpful features, it isn’t perfect. Even it offers a free plan, but it only limited to one project. When designing for both iOS and Android, two separate projects will be required. At that point, a paid plan would be needed.
#3. pxCode
pxCode is more like a combination of Webflow & Zeplin, but in a good way. This online visual editor required to import design file by your own, just like Zeplin, but it that sense it unlocked the design’s limitation on the design file. In pxCode, you can also build and launch responsive websites — all visually, it’s a WYSIWYG tool same as Webflow. While the difference between pxCode and the other tools is that, it doesn’t require measurement with Handoff tools, with no more Hand-Coding, but it instantly generates React/ React-Native/ HTML Code for you.
Since the tool is still new, the only limitation is they only support Sketch files currently, but Figma support is on their way. Most importantly, the tool completely is free to use.
Responsive Web Design is definitely the future as the usage is rising up significantly fast. If you plan to have your website receive more traffic, it is probably the best and only way.
Do you have any other opinion on Responsive Webpage? or any other Development tool you’d recommend? Let’s comment down to share your thought!
______________________________________________
Check out the tools
Webflow: https://webflow.com/
Zeplin: https://zeplin.io/
pxCode: https://pxcode.io/
