The alternative (mobile apps not withstanding) is having a separate mobile site. That requires some maneuvering between the mobile site and the regular site, which can be unwieldy, expensive, and occasionally counterproductive. Yet there are many cases where creating a separate mobile site may make more sense.
Transplant this discipline onto Web design, and we have a similar yet whole new idea. Why should we create a custom Web design for each group of users; after all, architects don’t design a building for each group size and type that passes through it? It shouldn’t require countless custom-made solutions for each new category of users. All schools and districts should be thinking about whether their website is optimized for the growing number of people who use the web exclusively on their mobile phones. By ensuring that the mobile experience comes first, you can put your communities’ needs first. Informed families are more engaged and supportive of the work that’s happening in your schools, so it’s a win for your school, too.
Mobile-Dedicated vs. Responsive Sites
If a style sheet made the layout too narrow, short, wide or tall, we could then detect that and switch to a new style sheet. This new child style sheet would adopt everything from the default style sheet and then just redefine the layout’s structure. These are obviously generalizations but you can see the benefits of having differing content presented to people in different screen viewing circumstances. Your potential customer browsing from a desktop computer probably isn’t looking to eat right now, and isn’t in a hurry to see where you’re located and what your phone number is. Most likely he’s looking to see if you offer a good atmosphere and what types food are available. As you can see in the examples below, as the screen gets smaller, the content shifts and changes to the best display for each screen.
In our default style sheet below, we have hidden the links to the sidebar content. Because our screen is large enough, we can display this content on page load. The above code in this media query applies only to screen and browser widths between 800 and 1200 pixels.
Mobile-friendly vs Mobile-responsive vs Responsive design
More site owners understand the benefits of responsive design and have implemented it. If your website doesn’t have it, yours will stand out as clunky and limited. If your visitors have a negative experience on your how to design a website mobile site, they will likely bounce and either vow to return to the desktop site later or more likely, never return. If you’re working with an existing website, on the other hand, cost correlates with scale.
Visitors to mobile design websites will notice that the page will look optimized for mobile devices — even if you visit from a desktop. This is because the URL is specifically pointing to a mobile version of each page. You’ll also find that a mobile design website is often stripped down in terms of functionality.