Mobile First, Responsive Web Design and Mobile Web Apps – A Few Insights

“Mobile first!” – This approach or philosophy is the fundamental for any company, when it comes to creating or remodelling their internet appearance. In times where almost everybody is accessing the WWW on the go, it is essential to adapt to this development via responsive web design, apps & co.

But which method is best suited to meet the individual requirements of a website? And which pros and cons have to be put into consideration?

Mobile First: A short explanation of this new internet development

Before the smartphone, tablet and note book, websites were only designed for the relatively big screens of personal computers. But since a couple of years (which describes a very long time in the IT world!) the trend goes towards mobility. Even the word “trend” does not apply anymore – it is a fact that the majority of all internet users access the world wide web from their mobile devices. Hence, it is of upmost importance that the websites are up to date with this development. The website has to be able to adapt to the individual format of the device – no matter if it is a smartphone or a PC. All functions, pictures, all information and tools have to be usable and readable. Always! Everywhere!

Examples for modern, state of the art and successful websites are plenty. “Mobile first” additionally describes a new approach to creating a website! First it is designed to match the requirements of small devices like a smartphone. Once this is achieved, the design and set up is then aligned to the bigger screens (PC).

Responsive web design – Standard for today`s websites!

Which approach is the best for your own website in terms of mobility? This depends on several aspects. To start off, it makes sense to put the spot light on the two most common ways of making a website “mobile”. Responsive web design (RWD) describes a way to program a website so that it automatically adapts to the needs of the individual end device. As this video perfectly shows, RWD is quite a complex task. To redesign an existing website accordingly is time consuming and expensive. Thus, many companies prefer to invest in a new website with RWD rather that to update their old one. Once the site is running on RWD, there is no need for additional maintenance. All contents are available under one URL and the website now runs on all platforms.

Mobile Web – a further option

The option of creating a mobile website in addition to its existing “normal” website for PCs and laptops, is a perfect solution for many companies. The main benefit of these mobile website is that they are perfectly designed to match the requirements of any mobile device. There are a lot of great mobile websites which highlight the advantages of this approach. The down side is that fact that the company has to maintain and update two websites instead of one.