Responsive website design allows your site to change orientation, resolution and layout based on the device a user is visiting from. But is that always the best option for every type of site?
Some sites that require detailed user interactions don’t scale well to a very small device. A thorough site and usage analysis needs to be performed to
determine the best solution for your website. Sometimes, a site with very specific pages designed specifically for phone-based users with options and content designed for a particular function, are more appropriate.
Let’s take a travel reservation site as an example. Typically, the actual reservation process is done from a desktop computer, which offers multiple options for adding hotel and car reservations to your travel package. But once the travel reservation is complete, that user may only use the mobile version of the site to check in or confirm a minor change. The full compliment of reservation functions isn’t used often and might not scale well responsively to a small platform. This might be due to technical limitations of technologies used on the desktop site not being deployable in a mobile form. It might also be due to space restrictions imposed on small devices. Or, your site might require extensive keyboard input, requiring the user’s mobile keyboard to be visible most of the time, reducing the amount of screen visible to your application. But whatever the reason, a proper usage study is needed before you decide to invest in a mobile deployment of your web application.
With proper planning, the right choice can easily be determined. Have you recently built a mobile version of your site and see some shortcomings? We would love to hear from you.
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