If you aren't familiar with websites that flex, which is often called Responsive Design, it is an approach to designing and coding websites which allows the content to be automatically reshaped or adapted to fit any size of the device used, from a huge desktop screen down to the tiny screen on a mobile.
KEY FEATURES
Viewing flexibility is the key feature so the design and layout maintains a uniform look for all devices. Unless photos, typeface, or the grid is flexible enough, your site might not be entirely appropriate for every visitor.
If a website fails to attract or is hard to use, the website is not effectively communicating at its potential, so visitors will shut the tab on their browser or turn off their device and move on. Todays fast paced market does not have time for zooming and searching and dragging on a palm-sized screen. Hence making sure your website is device friendly, is making sure your website has clear communication to all visitors. There's a large chance that at least a third or more of your visitors are going to be on a mobile device, and if they don’t like what they see or struggle to find what they want to see, then you're business could be losing sales.
NOT THE SAME AS MOBILE DESIGN
Responsive design is basically a form of web design as a whole. It should not be confused with a mobile site development. A mobile site is essentially a copy of an existing larger sized website, where it produces an optimized page that’s smaller and easier to navigate. This copy would require a different domain name and result in having two different site locations and content. It will need to be kept updated alongside the main website. Developing a mobile site is a cheap cost effective solution to cater for those mobile devices, but fails to approach your website as a whole flexible responsive site.
Responsive Design comes from a perspective that one cannot design for one notional mobile device when different phones, tablets and mini-tablets have different screen sizes and resolutions. Instead, the thinking goes, you should create a site that detects how big each visitor's browser is and adjust itself so that content moves and some design elements completely disappear as the screen size approaches a minimum.
Which website options is best option for your business? Your customers know, its what are they now and will be in the future using to view it.
ADVANTAGES
Saves Money: The cost of properly planning and coding a responsive site – particularly one that is visually attractive in all its forms – will be lower than creating separate desktop and mobile editions if all done at one time.
Improve SEO & Performance: Helps in elevating search engine optimisation. Responsive design is common with a unique URL as opposed to different mobile formats, link building remains quite simple which makes the site more visible to search engines.
Multi browser & device support: delivering your audience the best optimised content they want, within the context that they're viewing it
When you stop and consider the customer (sales), their immediate needs and content you want to provide to them, a plan to build a separate mobile site, create a whole flexible responsive site, or ignore mobile users altogether will present to you. We recommend presenting your business at its full potential by being as flexible and optimised as possible.