Key Differences Between Responsive and Mobile-First Web Design. The number of internet users has increased dramatically over the last few years, inching ever closer to 5 billion. On top of that, people are now using more devices to access the internet than ever before.
Mobile phones used to be simple communication devices, but have over the past decade or so, turned into pocket computers and a fundamental part of the life of most users. We use our phones not only for communication but for accessing information, navigation, and entertainment.
According to the World Advertising Research Center (WARC), as many as 72.6% of internet users will solely use their smartphones to access the web by 2025. This percentage alone speaks to the importance of developing websites that can transition seamlessly to mobile devices.
To achieve this goal, you can opt for one of the two most popular approaches — responsive design or mobile-first design.
We sat down with our friends from a leading web design agency in Florida to discuss these concepts in detail. This article will explain the differences between the two approaches and hopefully help you figure out which one better suits your needs.
Mobile-First and Responsive Web Design — Pros and Cons
The terms responsive design and mobile-first design are often confused and used interchangeably. Although there are many similarities, they are far from being the same. To provide you with complete information, we also sought the advice of experts from a web design and development company in los angeles.
Let’s take a closer look at each to explain their advantages, disadvantages, similarities and differences.
Mobile-First Design
Also known as progressive enhancement, mobile-first web design is the brainchild of Google’s product director, Luke Wroblewski, who came up with the concept and coined the term in 2009.
As its name suggests, the mobile-first design focuses on developing the mobile website first, scaling up to larger viewports from there. This approach’s main draw is that it forces the designer to start with the essential elements, providing a solid base for enhancement and development.
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Mobile-First Design — Advantages
Let’s investigate the advantages of mobile-first design to understand this approach’s appeal.
- Emphasis on most relevant content
Although smartphone screens seem to be getting bigger every year, they still provide a relatively small viewport for website content. As discussed above, being forced to work within this frame is an excellent way to ensure that only the most essential elements are presented on a page.
If you can avoid unnecessary details, you’ll streamline the customer journey, not only making it more enjoyable but also helping the prospect reach their goal quicker.
Moreover, this approach positively affects the functionality and look of the site’s desktop version, as it helps you focus on what truly matters.
- Fewer problems
Mobile-first design is relatively simple compared to responsive design, requiring more straightforward code and fewer lines overall. Since coding for desktops is generally more complex, the simplified mobile-first approach also helps developers avoid bugs and errors in the desktop version.
- Improved user experience
On a similar note, the mobile-first approach provides a strong UX foundation, allowing for further development down the line.
There are only so many elements you can include in the limited space provided by a smartphone screen, and this gives you a better chance to build an app or website with a high-quality, simple user experience. Also make sure you have proper website accessibility so all users with disabilities can fully use your website properly.
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Mobile-First Design — Disadvantages
Now, let’s look at the disadvantages to get the complete picture.
- Separate URLs
Since mobile-first design relies on having a different website version for desktop and mobile screens, the URLs of the two sites also differ. Aside from incurring additional hosting and development costs, this can confuse users, as they tend to spend more time looking for the site they need to access.
- Additional cost
As mentioned in the previous section, mobile-first design is not flexible, which means you’ll need to develop a separate version of the site for each device.
This doesn’t only mean having one website for smartphones and another for desktops. You’ll also need a website version for each operating system (iOS and Android), resulting in higher development costs both in terms of time and money.
- Dedicated content updates
Because you’ll have a few essentially separate websites, you’ll need to update the content separately as well. This can result in users seeing content updates on their phones, but not on their desktops and vice versa.
Also, let’s not forget that mobile websites can only present a limited amount of content. In contrast, desktop websites can be more diverse and show a wider picture (both literally and figuratively). This could potentially confuse some users, leading to a negative experience on one of the sites.
Responsive Design
Although responsive and mobile-first web design are often confused for one another, their approaches are almost opposed in a certain sense. This section will get into exactly how responsive design differs from mobile-first and where its advantages and disadvantages lie.
First, let’s talk about the origin and primary concept of responsive design. It was developed by Ethan Marcotte, relying on flexible layouts and images.
As opposed to mobile-first, the desktop website is the focal point here, and CSS is used to adapt specific parameters to the size of the browser window or viewport.
The primary draw of this approach is that it allows developers to design one version of a website or app, which then adapts to all screens and browser windows. As the website is progressively scaled-down, we also use the term gradual degradation to describe this process.
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Responsive Design — Advantages
Again, to get a clearer picture of the appeal of responsive design, we’ll first take a look at its most notable advantages.
- One website — unlimited devices
The critical difference between responsive and mobile design, and the former’s most notable advantage, is that you don’t need to create separate apps or websites for different screen sizes and devices with this approach.
All you need to do is develop a desktop website and adapt it accordingly. This also means that a responsive website requires less work and resources to maintain and update.
- No pinch zooming and awkward viewport sizes
When mobile users find themselves on a non-responsive desktop website, their user experience will almost certainly be rather painful. They’ll need to awkwardly zoom in to see each element and zoom in on buttons to tap them.
Aside from the fact that user experiences such as this can quickly ruin a company’s reputation, they also lengthen the customer journey, making it more difficult for them to reach their destination — a conversion.
Responsive design makes the browsing process infinitely more user friendly for users on all types of devices, improving your conversion rates and brand reputation in the long run.
- Single URL
With an adaptable, responsive website, all the files are stored in one location, hosted on one server, and accessible through one URL. This means you won’t have to pay additional hosting fees, and your prospects will be able to find your site at the same address regardless of the device they are using.
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Responsive Design — Disadvantages
Now that we’ve listed the pros of responsive design, it’s time to get into some of its most notable cons.
- Longer loading times on mobile
Since the development of a responsive website tends to start with the site’s desktop version, developers use high-resolution graphics and images. This means the site is “heavier” than it needs to be on mobile, making loading times longer. Users will therefore need to wait a bit longer to load your website, which may lead to an increase in bounce rates.
- More complex code
The flexibility and versatility of a responsive website come with another pretty significant downside — the complexity of the code. Due to the complicated underlying processes that a responsive website goes through, it requires more lines of CSS.
Therefore, the development of such a website tends to cost more and require more time. On the flipside, maintenance costs are generally lower compared to mobile-first websites.
- UI and UX balancing act
Since responsive websites aim to meet the needs of both mobile and desktop users, getting the balance between the designs right can be a challenging task. First of all, desktops and mobile devices have completely different interfaces, and the way you interact with the devices differs as well.
This leads to problems when transitioning from one viewport to the other, and not getting the balance right could lead to you losing both groups of users, so be careful.
How to Choose Between a Mobile-First and Responsive Website?
Now that you’re familiar with the key differences between responsive and mobile-first designs let’s talk about how you can decide which approach to use for your website. As always, you’ll need to do some research first.
Start by collecting any information you can find about your audience, creating user personas and nailing the goals for your website. This will help you understand which of the two approaches best suits your user base.
Once you have the complete picture, we recommend leaning towards the design that will benefit most of your users. If most of your audience is likely to visit your website on mobile, you’re probably better off sticking to a mobile-first approach.
On the other hand, if most of your users will use desktop computers to visit your site, or even if it is a 50-50 split, we recommend going for the responsive design option.
Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution here, but thankfully, either of the design philosophies should satisfy most of your customers.
Author bio
Travis Dillard is a business consultant and an organizational psychologist based in Arlington, Texas. Passionate about marketing, social networks, and business in general. In his spare time, he writes a lot about new business strategies and digital marketing for Digital Strategy One.
