Respond to survive

Nothing is more frustrating than navigating a desktop website on a mobile device. It creates frustration that can lead to higher bounce rates on your site. From the statistics below, it makes good sense to ensure your website is responsive to this strongly emerging technology.

The number of Australians using tablet computers is fast approaching 3 million; by 2016 it is predicted to reach 11 million Australians, more then half the population! Don't forget mobile phones; there are 16.2 million phones in Australia, this has seen an increase in mobile downloads of 35.3% from Oct-Dec 2011 to April-June 2012. This equates to 5,000 Terabytes. Also Australians have the second-highest per capita uptake of smartphones in the world according to Google. 

So how is this relevant to Website design, website development and E-commerce? Well, we need to cater for these devices and there are 2 ways of doing this. Either build individual websites for each device or create one site that adapted to fit each device.

I truly think that creating one site that can respond to different screen resolutions is the way to go. There are a lot of design challenges but the end result will save you a lot of time when code needs to be updated or new functions need to be implemented. Also this solution can cater not only for different devices but different resolutions.