Responsive or adaptive web design: which one is good for your business?

“The shift to mobile design is even bigger than the PC revolution.” Quotes Kevin Lynch, CTO, Adobe

Responsive web design is the one that ‘responds’ and ‘predicts’ the screen size for which it is intended. This approach offers users a “consistent” experience across multiple devices and browsers. This ensures that resize, pan, and scroll events are kept to a minimum. Simply put, with RWD you can create web pages that are versatile and optimized for the size of the screen you are accessing.

Responsive sites work on a “Build Once, Run Everywhere” approach. There are a number of benefits for companies to invest in responsive sites. They are as follows:

• It is a guarantee of consistency and quality on various screens.
• Cost effective and profitable as you only need ONE site for all your business needs
• Increase your reach to more traffic across different devices, which translates to higher revenue.
• Improves the chances of tracking your website’s measured results An unmatched user experience regardless of screen display size
• Responsive designs ready for the future to stand the test of time

This is all fine, but how do you decide if you need a responsive mobile site or not? Take your site’s Google Analytics Mobile Device Overview report. If your mobile users turn out to be more than 5%, you can consider the responsive approach to design.

One important thing to take care of when creating a responsive site for your business is Information Architecture (AI). Plan your site content in advance in detail to avoid pitfalls. Rigid AI will ensure your site delivers consistent and unmatched performance across all platforms. Good AI will also improve your site’s loading time. Users generally have a short attention span and especially lack the patience for a site that takes years to load. It increases the chances that you will lose your potential customers to your competitors.

Responsive Vs Adaptive

Adaptive design is made up of layers of progressive enhancements (PE) that are focused on the user. A recent article, Understanding Progressive Improvement Techniques in Web Design, provides the different layers that make up adaptive web design:

The 3 layers of progressive enhancement (PE):

• Content layer: rich semantic HTML markup
• Presentation layer: CSS and style
• Client-side scripting layer: JavaScript or jQuery behaviors

It is important to note that responsive web design is for multiple fluid grid layouts, while adaptive web design is for multiple fixed grid layouts. Both allow designers to create a responsive site. However, the difference lies in the delivery of the design or site on all platforms.

Responsive requires more coding for implementation compared to adaptive layouts that use scripting to accommodate different screen sizes. To clarify your doubts, check out 70 Modern Responsive Web Design Examples to better understand RWD and AWD designs in action.

To sum up

If you are still confused about which design strategy to choose. Think of it this way, if you want to create an unrivaled mobile experience from scratch, use adaptive design, and if you want to offer a site that performs very well on multiple platforms, go for a responsive design. In either case, establish a solid strategy and work out the basics before you even start creating your design elements.

Remember, while there may be technical differences between the two approaches, the goal of both is to deliver optimized content for audiences. Try and discover the immense possibilities of these two design methodologies.