The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/230349
website was difficult to read on your smartphone, a visitor would race back to their office to view it on a more user-friendly screen. (That is, if your site even loaded on a smartphone.) That no longer holds true. There is an opportunity cost for a site that's not read easily. Users can get frustrated when a task they know is available on the desktop site doesn't exist in the mobile version. Responsive design eliminates that element of aggravation. Instead, responsive design adapts to a user's device so that even on smaller screens, your top-line message will be front and center — readable and action-oriented. See how a responsively designed website would adapt its layout to various screen sizes: to index. According to developers.google.com, "Responsive Web design is a setup where the server always sends the same HTML code to all devices, and CSS [cascading style sheets] is used to alter the rendering of the page on the device using media queries. Our algorithms should automatically detect this setup if all Googlebot user agents (both Googlebot and Googlebot-Mobile) are allowed to crawl the page assets (CSS, javascript, and images)." • Sites that redirect users from your main site to a mobile site take longer. The beauty of a responsive design is that it is transparent to the user. It just works. ADDITIONAL BENEFITS RESPONSIVE DESIGN VS. MOBILE SITES There are three main arguments for responsive design versus having unique mobile versions: • A mobile website is a standalone site, so it requires additional maintenance. When you add (or delete) content on one, you need to take the time to update the other versions. • A mobile site might make your website more difficult for search engines to find. A single URL makes it easier for Google 74 Peer to Peer Firms and other organizations utilizing responsive design for their public websites are also experiencing the following benefits: Improved SEO: In addition to providing effortless access to your website, responsive design enables Google to see you. A responsively designed site makes on- and off-page website content easier for Googlebots to crawl and read. The use of uniform URLs across platforms is an added boost for search engine results. Less Work for the Development Team: There are multiple benefits to the development team that accrue when implementing responsive design, according to Bill Kava of Ektron, a Web content management and customer experience management software provider. Kava notes that with responsive design you are working with a single code base, eliminating management, development and testing across different sites. Responsive design works with a single content repository, with a single content architecture. There also is no longer a need for device mapping. Speed: Responsive design can reduce the speed required to load your site. In a speed comparison between two different news websites, which typically are very content-heavy, the launch times were dramatically different. Global News (http://globalnews.ca), which relaunched last year as a responsive site, loaded in 3.8 seconds, while the Globe and Mail website took more than four times longer at 20 seconds. My great-grandmother would not have had the patience to wait 20 seconds, even if it were a story about how I'd just won the Nobel Peace Prize.