Why Making Your Website Mobile-Responsive is Easier Than You Think
How does your website look on a mobile device?
For too many people — especially small businesses and nonprofits — mobile is still an afterthought.
It’s understandable. For a long time, you had two choices for having a mobile website — create a mobile version of your website, or create a mobile app.
Both of these options were fraught with complications. A mobile version of your website required a lot of extra work, and might not look good on all devices. A mobile app was incredibly trendy for a while — causing all matter of media companies to spend a lot of money on apps that no one needed. Both approaches cost a lot of money and required fairly intensive development, two things which small business and nonprofits have in short supply.
Luckily, there is a third path, a really awesome path that puts content front and center, and allows for maximum flexibility.
Behold the mobile responsive website, that is, a website developed to respond to the device on which it is viewed.
[caption id=”attachment_3496" align=”alignnone” width=”620"]
This example is from Copyblogger, which has a great article on mobile responsiveness.[/caption]
That’s right — view the website on desktop, laptop, iPad, Android phone or iPhone and it looks great.
Even better? It’s not a version, with cut-down features. It’s not an app that you have to download. It’s your website. It looks and functions like your website.
The great thing is that it’s increasingly easy to get a mobile responsive website, especially if you use WordPress. WordPress users can choose from a wide array of themes that are inherently mobile-responsive. In fact, I’ve created a class on making a mobile-responsive website with WordPress’s free default theme, Twentytwelve.
Next time you’re surfing the web, check out whether the site you’re on is responsive or not by dragging the right hand corner to make the window smaller. If the website adjusts, you’re looking at a mobile responsive website.
If the cost of mobile has been holding you back, maybe it’s time to take a look at the options that are available now.
Your readers will thank you.
