Lay My Hat

I'm just beginning a redesign of our sites (and once I've done that will be creating another site for our new property using the same design ... and once I've done that will be creating another site for ... something else ) and I just can't decide which way to go: fully responsive design, or mobile friendly?

At the moment my sites have mobile friendly versions. They're not bad looking, they work (apart from the footers, which don't and still need some work), and most importantly they load quickly. Google analytics tell me that 31% of my site visitors are using mobile devices.

Although all the buzz is to have a responsive site I can't help wondering if they're all they're cracked up to be - some figures I've seen, for instance, suggest much longer loading times.

So I've now gone into typical Libran hivering-hovering indecisive mode (which doesn't take much at the best of times). Can anyone help dig me out?

I would go with responsive as it does give you multiple options; such as versions for desktop, tablet & mobile.
I use xara for my web design, a little more expensive but the end results can be stunning. They provide templates sets for responsive websites.

I would go with responsive as it will handle all device sizes. It will still be a compromise though and Google may rate the responsive site lower than a dedicated mobile version. This is because your images will still tend to be the same ones used for the desktop version so not really optimized for mobile.

Sites such as PMP are currently not responsive but have a mobile version served up instead for small display sizes. This will be rated higher by Google but the presentation on medium display sizes, such as tablets will be compromised. I think for this reason, even PMP intend to switch to responsive soon.

One disadvantage with responsive designs is that everything is fluid and often scalable. Forget trying to position everything perfectly for your own screen and always view all your pages at all possible sizes.

Responsive. Reduces the admin overhead.

kevsboredagain wrote:your images will still tend to be the same ones used for the desktop version so not really optimized for mobile.

Yes, that's the bit that concerns me most, kev.

We don't have 3g coverage here - or anywhere near here - so I can't test out loading times on a data connection, but for an image-heavy site like mine I wonder if it could be very slow - and costly in data use. Can someone who doesn't live in the back of beyond enlighten me on this one?

The other thing is that so many of the responsive templates look the same (and not especially inspiring to a fussypants Libran) .

Responsive, for sure. It's far less overhead than trying to maintain what boils down to two different sets of templates and their related content.

Remember, Google rewards websites who's data constantly is updated with things like news updates etc, so you should in theory be adding information regularly. If you're using a CMS this is relatively easy but if you're hand-coding the pages then it'll quickly become a chore.

French Cricket wrote: We don't have 3g coverage here - or anywhere near here - so I can't test out loading times on a data connection, but for an image-heavy site like mine I wonder if it could be very slow - and costly in data use. Can someone who doesn't live in the back of beyond enlighten me on this one?

What you can do is use Firefox's Firebug extension. The Network tool ( http://getfirebug.com/network ) very nicely tells you how big the page is to download, so you don't need to test on a mobile to see the page size.

Also, if you do "Control-Shift M" you can change the size of the Firefox viewport to see how well the page resized on smaller devices.

kevsboredagain wrote:I would go with responsive as it will handle all device sizes. It will still be a compromise though and Google may rate the responsive site lower than a dedicated mobile version. This is because your images will still tend to be the same ones used for the desktop version so not really optimized for mobile.

Sites such as PMP are currently not responsive but have a mobile version served up instead for small display sizes. This will be rated higher by Google but the presentation on medium display sizes, such as tablets will be compromised. I think for this reason, even PMP intend to switch to responsive soon.

One disadvantage with responsive designs is that everything is fluid and often scalable. Forget trying to position everything perfectly for your own screen and always view all your pages at all possible sizes.

This, and don't forget to test mobile for IOS Android and Windows if you can, they look and play differently

As a website developer as well as holiday homes owner my advice is definitely responsive.

More and more web browsing is being done on mobile devices and last year mobile browsing overtook desktop browsing in terms of internet searches so having a website that runs on mobile devices is a must.

A good website developer will build a responsive website as standard now and optimise images accordingly.

I agree with Andypearce and kevsboredagain, I too am a web developer (have been for many years) and holiday home owner so suggest responsive all the way.

It'd be nice if these out the box sites utilised the html5 srcset as this enables you to provide several images (for different screensizes), therefore the browser only loads the image that matches its screen size.
They could implement as there's a javascript fallback and html fallback too should said browser not support it.