Responsive Web Design and Cross-browser Compatibility !!

As a digital marketing person, the primary goal is to drive traffic to the website. As a web designer/developer your goal is to convert this traffic into engaged users to access information or complete sales. As a web designer, your goal is to ensure that these visitors get the same experience irrespective how they visit the website: Browser or Device. Responsive Web Design primarily means the website is compatible optimized for different screen size. Cross-browser means your javascript or HTML renders correctly irrespective of the browser: Chrome, Safari, IE or Firefox.

Responsive Web design

Responsive Web design is the approach that allows reformats automatically based on screen or display size that more suitable experience for users. Web layout will change based on screen size and capabilities of the device. e.g. desktop, laptop, tablet, and smartphone etc. so your customer can access your website easily on all platforms. Also, users can read and navigate your site easily without unnecessary zooming and resizing with only vertical scrolling, so it's a hassle-free experience for smaller screen users as well. In the past, designers would build two versions of the website: Desktop version and mobile version. The second reason not to have two separate websites (for mobile and desktop), is that we will only have to manage one back-end version that needs an update. It will be easy to handle all the content from a single place instead of two different website version. With newer technologies and creative solutions, it almost becomes a no-no solution.

If you had checked your traffic in present days, then you should probably wonder that most of your visitors came through mobile browsing. That's why now days mostly customers turning on responsive structure because of the increasing ratio of mobile searches across the globe, so it's best to attempt to provide the best experience to your users. Responsive is a very flexible structure so you can build custom solutions for a wider audience and every custom solution will help you to make better user experience.

In the past, there was a huge rush to build mobile apps to address the challenges of the compatible mobile website. With responsive design, there are lots of features that can be built via cms and responsive design that you don’t need a mobile app. This is not to say the mobile app is not a good investment, it’s the just business case to spend resources will be critical.

Cross-Browser Compatibility

Well, remember the time when we used to see the message that, this website is optimized or runs well on ‘xxxxx’ browser. Gone are those days, when a web designer could get away with those messages. Users expect a website to run on any browser. Cross-Browser Compatibility is a practice that making sure that your website must be compatible and work well across all major browser. When you're building your website, ensure that your site renders perfectly on all major browsers and versions. With so many browsers and versions, it’s definitely not an easy task. There are two challenges: Testing across so many browsers and versions are not easy and testing each page. Yes, there are lots of automated tools which can help but there are issues which need to be tested manually

At cmsMinds, we build all sites which are responsive and cross-browser compatible. If you have a website and not sure if it’s cross-browser compatible let us know and we can do an audit to see if has issues. Contact one of our team members for a free initial consultation.