RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN
Overview
Responsive Web Design (RWD) is a method of website development where websites are built to respond to the user's environment. A responsive website adapts to the screen size and orientation of the device that it accessing it. The website will rearrange its content, media and layout to fit the screen size of the device being used, allowing for a better user experience.
Why we use Responsive Designs for your websites?
One website is used for multiple devices
One of the most appealing aspects of responsive web design is that anyone can access the same content on any device and it will look great no matter what the screen size is. This provides a great user-experience and is an important characteristic, since it is impossible to anticipate all the devices and screen sizes searchers will use to access your site. A website that works well regardless of the size of the screen or the device being used, will provide a better and more consistent user-experience than a separate mobile website that is designed for a specific device and screen size.
It is recommended by Google
Google is undoubtedly the largest search engine, having ended 2013 with 67.3 percent of the search market share (source: comScore), so it stands to reason that they carry a lot of weight when it comes to website optimisation standards. Responsive Web Designs (RWD's) are the recommended configuration by Google for building smartphone optimised websites (source: Google Developers).
It helps Google with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Having one website helps Google's algorithms to correctly assign the indexing properties for your website so that it can be properly indexed. It also saves resources for both your website and Google's web crawlers as only one website has to be searched by the crawlers.
Your website is easier to manage
Managing and maintaining one website and one Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign is far simpler than having to do the same for a desktop and mobile specific website(s).