Adaptive vs. Responsive Design: Best for Mobile Responsive Websites?

It is no secret that mobile device use, along side mobile search is growing exponentially. More and more visitors are using mobile phones and devices such as tablets and smartphones to visit websites – over 60% to be exact. Ensuring that your website is easy to view and navigate on mobile devices, has never been more important. Neglect mobile responsiveness and suffer the consequence of high bounce rates and low traffic.

As mobile takes over, and with so many screen sizes, mobile responsiveness design and development has website developers spearheading the best technology. So how can we bridge the gap between devices? What a conundrum!  

Enter Adaptive and Responsive Design? Which one is best?

Let’s compare Adaptive and Responsive Design further:

Adaptive Web Design

Adaptive design has several distinct layouts for any screen size and the layout that will be utilised will depend on the size of screen that a viewer is using. In this kind of design, there could be specific formats for mobile phones, desktop computers and tablets - each of these are made in advance. These designs are put on “standby mode” until someone with that screen size visit the website. The website will identify the type of gadget being used and sends the pre-made layout for that gadget.

Advantages of Adaptive Web Design:

Loads Pages Quickly and Efficiently

Adaptive websites are currently better for page load time performance and overall user experience. This is because adaptive design works by only transferring those layouts necessary for the specific gadget and enhancing multimedia content and photos instantly to suit size and display resolution.

Allows you to alter the experience based on the user’s content and intent

A mobile user’s intent is to participate with a business in a very exact way quickly. Which is usually different from a desktop search behaviour.

Responsive Web Design

Responsive design on the other hand, offers a premium viewing experience of a website regardless with the type of device the user is using. This is achieved by means of fluid grids. Fluid grids is the term for a design that works regardless of what the size of screen is. So even if you resize the screen, that same format will automatically be projected for the user.

Advantages of Responsive Web Design:

Increase your Engagement on Tablets and Mobile Devices

Responsive design means one site can be access on all devices regardless of age, brand or resolution. With mobile sales volume projected to reach 2.05B by 2020, obviously responsive design has never been more important for those contemplating enhancing their online presence. Sites that are using this kind of design are already boasting increased traffic from tablet and mobile devices. This suggests a strong commercial authority to adapt to responsive design.

Increase your Website Visibility in Search Engines

By using a Responsive Design, you have one website, with a single set of hypertext links; which leads to a less time to maintain your sites changes. It lets you to concentrate on a link outreach with a fused Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy. SEO campaigns can be costly and time consuming, but by making a responsive site, all of your hard work can be focused on a single site, with one strategy and approach across all devices enabling you to achieve a better digital campaign outcome.

Selecting between a responsive and an adaptive design takes careful consideration. The right choice of using mobile view web design holds the key to the success for your website. Making it easier for traffic to access your site on different mobile devices will only attract more online visitors to your website. While it might be sensible to stick to a responsive design for the sake of cost, improving SEO, and keeping users content with a seamless experience between devices, it’s crucial to check the pros and cons of both designs in full. For guidance on the best design for your business, contact our expert team today for a free digital consultation.

 

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