Weighing the pros and cons of responsive web design

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By MEGAN CONNIFF | Published: SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

Be the first to comment | This entry was posted in Events, Marketing, Mobile

There are countless consumer electronics devices on the market and tons of differently sized screens (all eyes were on Apple today as they added a new one to the list). While it’s fantastic that consumers have so many different ways to access the world of digital commerce, it presents a challenge for retailers, who feel as if they have little control over what their sites look like across multiple devices. All the digital touch points in the world won’t help a retailer if customers aren’t able to have a great user experience on a retailer’s sites. During one of Tuesday’s Annual Summit sessions, Fluid Inc.‘s Steve Reichgut, HSN‘s Edward Deutscher and Perry Ellis‘ Michelle Magallon discussed the options for this fundamental digital commerce problem.

Steve Reichgut (Fluid Inc.), Michelle Magallon (Perry Ellis International), and Edward Deutscher (HSN) discuss leveraging responsive web design for effective and successful mobile strategies.

So what are the solutions for retailers’ multi-screen issues? Some retailers have opted to stick with a desktop site, which sometimes forces customers to pinch and zoom or scroll. Others have created different sites for different devices: tablet, mobile or website. Still others have been investing in responsive and adaptive websites that use flexible site design and progressive engagement to adapt to users’ capabilities. Reichgut offered up a detailed analysis of the benefits and challenges that come with a responsive and/or adaptive approach.

Benefits of responsive web design:

• Less expensive to maintain
• Single code base
• Improved SEO
• Single URL for all devices
• Consistent experiences across all devices

Challenges of responsive web design:

• Pages are more time consuming to create
• They require new content management workflows
• They require new image optimization processes
• Minimal support for responsive web design in e-commerce for merchandizing or visualization
• Responsive web design doesn’t play well with external widgets
• Prototyping and testing is more complex

While there are a lot of options and factors to think about, retailers need to consider what is most important to them in terms of approach. Flexibility? Cost? Support options? There’s a solution out there for every retailer who strives to create a positive user experience for every customer, regardless of device.