The first smart device called Simon created by IBM appeared 20 years ago but smart devices have only actually boomed in about 10 recent years. Along with that explosion, the size screen size has been quite diverse; it has no longer been confined just in the desktop. Therefore, it is costly and time-consuming if you try to design the website for each screen size, your web design should be more flexible, or in other words, you need responsive web design.

What does Responsive web design mean?

As its name, Responsive web design or RWD can respond to the user’s viewport, device, or platform, or in brief explanation, your website can acclimate to any screen resolution. From the first start until now, RWD has changed a bit but in general, it still follows the three main primary concepts as follow:

- Fluid grids: they allow you to structure content in a predictable and consistent manner by adjusting the size and contents of the element in your site.

- Flexible images: They are the images that will be placed in a flexible grid having the max-width CSS rule applied at 100 percent. To avoid the problems related to slow loading time, designers should compress the images’ resolutions, so that they will work smoothly with smaller devices. Besides, you still have another choice that is set as a percentage of the width of the page as a whole.

- Media queries: A CSS3 module will control how styles will be applied

Why we should continue with Responsive Web Design?

The main reason is responding to the user's viewport and bringing them the best experience on your site because customers love:

- No directing. No duplicated app due to the limitation of mobile disk space

- The maintenance cost of multiple websites that use a single domain will quite high and it is also quite difficult and complicated to update. In case you choose another solution such as adding an extra codebase, you will need to pay more money for maintenance cost in long-run. Both solutions are more expensive than designing a responsive or adaptive website.

See more about the adaptive website: Adaptive Web Design – Do you know it?

Generally, a responsive website can address all of those concerns. If a single set of images, grids, and the like are automatically resized to fit the user’s viewport, then the UX is by definition more consistent than switching between two separate sites.

Let's summarize all the main advantages of responsive web design:

- Increase in visitor amount leads to an increase in conversion rates. According to the data collected through the years, a responsive website will gain 11% more conversion rate than normal ones.

- Forcing you to prioritize contents in your site makes the website stronger.

- Improving SEO because Google loves responsive

- Allowing you to be detail oriented, especially with designers who always care about details.