How Your Site Can Address RWD
As of April 30, 2013, WordPress indicates that more than 64.9 million sites use WordPress as their content management system (CMS) around the world. HaymoreEndodontics.com is an example of a site that uses WordPress. (Note: If you want to check whether a site is using WordPress, check its source code using the Web development tools of your browser.)
Through research of WorPress themes and plug-ins, you can solve most problems when your site is accessed through a mobile device. For instance, a very basic informational site could be optimized for mobile phones and tablets through a plug-in that replaces fixed width and height attributes, so images resize appropriately. Just a simple tweak to your images can do wonders for the visual aspect of your site when accessed by your mobile users.
Even though I have focused on WordPress, other CMSes such as Drupal and Magento offer their respective plug-ins to handle RWD.
What About Native Apps?
While native apps are definitely another option to meet the demand of mobile users, they are not a sustainable option for everybody. Think about how many mobile operating systems there are. Is your company ready to invest in iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry app development? Furthermore, the Android operating system has several nuances, due to the large number of phone manufacturers. Will that investment pay off? Consider this: 60 percent of tablet users prefer reading news on the mobile Web than via an app, according to the Pew Research Center. Unless you are a media company or an actual app developer, you would save time and money by addressing all devices at the same time through RWD.
Takeaways
As mobile Web use increases, savvy business owners will take steps to address the needs of those visitors.
Talk with your Webmaster about options to make your site easy to read across all devices or the devices that your target audience uses the most.
Responsive Web design (RWD) is a cost-effective way to address all Web users, regardless of what devices they use.
Most content management systems offer themes and plug-in options to create or edit sites using RWD.
Related articles:
The Importance of Content Authorship on the Internet
Grow Your Business: A Market Research Primer
