Adaptive design
Adaptive design is one of the methods for adapting websites to mobile devices. With this approach, the domain, structure and content of the website remain unchanged, and the design automatically adjusts to the screen resolution.
Flexible design allows maintaining the familiar appearance and navigation of the website. All changes made in the main version will be automatically displayed on mobile devices.
Access to the resource from any device.
Unlike a separate mobile website version, the website design adapted for mobile devices is located at the same address. The user does not have to remember the subdomain URL. Moreover, when the user enters the main domain, no (automatic) redirection to the mobile version is needed, and this reduces the risk of error.
Adaptive design completely duplicates the content and functionality of the version for PCs. Therefore, the visitor does not need to go to the main version.
The dimensions and location of units take into account the features of using the touch display. Small elements are excluded, and the content is displayed at an easy-to-view scale.
Adaptive design. Benefits for search engines
Mobile-first indexing has long been used in the work of leading search algorithms (Google, Yandex, Bing, Yahoo, MSN). Websites adapted to the resolution of mobile devices will always get higher positions in search results. In fact, SEO promotion of the website without a version for smartphones and tablets would not make sense.
Moreover, in the case of adaptive design, the results of work on SEO promotion of the main website will also apply to the mobile version as an integral part of it. The subdomain is not used, and this means that there will be no problems with the appearance of ‘duplicate’ pages.
If your website is displayed improperly on mobile devices, in most cases, this will result in the user instantly leaving the page, and the number of ‘failures’ is one of the key behavioral factors of search indexing.
A little more about the benefits of adaptive web design
In addition to the above advantages of the adaptive version, it is important to consider a few more points:
Ease of analysis. Performance of the mobile and main version of a website is much more convenient to track as a whole.
Versatility. The ‘rubber’ version automatically adjusts to any device.
Fast loading because of the lack of visitor redirection between the website versions.
Cross-platform. It opens equally on all mobile OSs and browsers.
Here are some successful examples of adaptive web design:
Sony
Product cards on the company's website are precisely tailored to fit the user's screen size.
The Boston Globe
The news website with tens of thousands of materials has not lost the convenience of navigation on mobile phones.
O’neil Clothing
After adding the adaptive design, conversion with Android increased by 407.3%.
Starbucks
In addition to developing iOS and Android applications, the company also made an adaptive web design.
Indochino
For the sake of adaptive design, the company completely redesigned the homepage into a catalogue.
TruckersReport
The number of newsletter subscriptions increased by 80% after the development of adaptive design.
Adaptive design or separate mobile version?
- Budget for the implementation of the solution for mobile audience;
- Goals for the development of mobile version;
- The need to change the website for mobile version.
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Comparison criterion
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1
Adaptive design |
2
Mobile version of the website |
| Unique structure and content | ||
| High loading speed on mobile devices | ||
| One URL with desktop version | ||
| The need for additional promotion | ||
| Separate management of the mobile and desktop versions | ||
| Low cost | ||
| Short development timing |
The possibility to edit the mobile version of the website separately from the main one for many people is an advantage, rather than a disadvantage.
The perks of adaptive design and application can level out the benefits of a separate mobile version.
Features of development of adaptive web design
No matter how good the interface is, the smaller it is, the better. This problem is particularly acute in the adaptive design of websites with a large amount of data and functionalities. By the way, some elements can be hidden only for the mobile audience.
The usability of the website on mobile devices will directly depend on the proper location of all elements in the modular grid. Sometimes, for the ease of adaptation of the website to mobile devices, you have to revise the structure and the main version.
It is very important to properly adapt the graphic elements of pages (images, videos, infographics) as well as to test the product on various devices, operating systems and browsers. A prerequisite for the completion of the development is detailed testing.
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