Responsive Web Design vs. Mobile Website Design

Key Features of Mobile-First Web Design

Mobile-first web design focuses on people who use mobile devices to get online. Importantly, this approach pays due attention to the navigation process, ensuring the viewers find the information they’re looking for quickly and easily. For example, the use of an accordion menu can give viewers a preview of what they may expect to find inside each individual section.

This design concept also pays attention to all clickable buttons, links, and other components. Given that mobile phone users use their thumbs to navigate websites, buttons, and links are larger, and there’s adequate space between different sections listed under a menu. Until not so long ago, the mobile-first approach aimed to do away with bulky content, but given Google’s move toward mobile-first indexing, this is no longer a good idea.

Key Features of Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design ensures that your website works well no matter what device a user might use to access it, be it a mobile phone, a tablet, a desktop, a laptop, or even a smart TV. This design concept ensures that your website automatically adapts to the screen size in question. A web designer or web design company builds a responsive website by using a flexible grid foundation. Enabling different views involves addressing multiple contexts via media queries. The graphics need to be flexible as well.

Rendering Experience

With mobile web design, your mobile website is essentially a copy of your desktop website. A server handles all the work, wherein it delivers a website that viewers can access and navigate smoothly using a mobile device with a small screen. This option is ideal when you are only targeting mobile phone users. It is a more cost-effective option when compared to responsive web design.

Unlike mobile web design where a server does the work, the device used to view your website carries out the rendering when it comes to responsive design. Simply put, a viewer’s device adjusts the website according to its screen size. The device automatically switches between portrait or landscape orientation. This is a good solution because it is flexible and works well across devices like desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.

Domain

When running a mobile website, you will need a different domain. In most cases, companies choose to use “m.domain.com” to differentiate between their websites for desktops and mobile devices. This can affect the domain by diluting it and compromising organic search traffic. One aspect of the responsive vs. separate mobile site comparison is that you will have a harder time managing a mobile and a desktop version since you will be dealing with two different content silos.

With responsive design, you get to keep a single domain, and nothing changes except the back-end code. This is a good alternative because a website owner only gets to manage one site. This design option also works well in eliminating complex redirects and simplifying the sharing of website addresses.

Link Equity

A mobile search involves using separate domains. This means that the links shared from a mobile browser do not count as search link equity towards the primary site, which is not good from the search engine optimization (SEO) perspective. On the other hand, responsive web design embeds new code on a website’s back end, which ensures that a company’s link equity is preserved. For search, this is a great option.

Future Readiness

New mobile phones, tablets, and other related devices enter the market every year. This means you need to keep up with new-generation gadgets by reworking your mobile site. You cannot predict the type of gadgets that will hit the market tomorrow and this increases the maintenance cost.

Responsive web design is future-ready. Once your website jumps on this bandwagon, it will be ready for gadgets made next month and those that come out the next year. This means you do not need to keep reworking your website as mobile phone generations change. The initial cost of responsive web design is high but you will get a good return on your investment (ROI) since you get to steer clear of costly reworks in the future.

Design

What good is a responsive design vs. mobile site comparison if it does not talk about the actual design? Since web designers create mobile websites specifically for mobile devices, it allows for exceptional creativity and design. The second mobile-friendly website you get essentially acts like a responsive site.

When it comes to creativity, responsive web design has its limits. The more complicated a website gets the more complex the adjustments become. If you choose to go the mobile responsive design way, there’s a possibility that you may have to sacrifice some features to ensure that there’s no compromise on the layout when displayed on different screens.

User Experience

In everything you do to your website, user experience (UX) should be a top priority. This is because while it is your website, you are making it for your target audience. The design of a mobile website caters specifically to mobile devices. This means it will load fast and display better. Designers who work on your website will make sure they optimize it for mobile phones.

With responsive mobile website design, integrating some elements for desktops or mobile phones might be a difficult task, which means you may get a website with limited abilities. Since the design accounts for desktop users, the website might load slower on smaller devices. However, this design is a better solution because it will still work well across all types of devices.

Loading Speed

When it comes to websites, speed is an important element. This is because most people will not wait for a website to load, they will just move on to the next option. If coded well, a mobile website has the advantage of loading fast. Speed matters for SEO and designers have to make sure that websites are not too big for mobile devices so they load quickly.

Responsive web design includes CSS media query code, which may slow down a website. This design concept involves using many elements for flexibility purposes, which can play a role in slowing down a website.

However, turning to responsive web design is a great idea because most businesses are shifting from separate mobile websites to responsive websites. This means that even your competitors will have their websites load with the same speed as yours, and you won’t have to worry about this aspect.

Google’s Mobile-First Index

Google’s John Mueller has indicated that the company has moved completely toward mobile-first indexing. Given the dominance of online searches from smartphones, it comes as no surprise that Google chooses to prioritize mobile devices.

From the business perspective, having a mobile website with significantly less content than the version for desktops might not serve the purpose. This makes moving toward responsive design a better option, especially if you want to optimize your website for Google’s mobile-first index and achieve high search engine rankings.

If you do choose to go the mobile website way, make sure it serves as the primary version and that it provides all the content that a viewer may find on its desktop version. Bear in mind that if you wish to remain on the good side of search engines, prioritizing mobile users is vital.

The Comparison in a Nutshell

Depending on whether you opt for a mobile-first website or a responsive website, this is what you may expect.

Mobile Website

• Designed specifically for mobile devices
• Can be mobile device-specific
• Can offer content that’s different from the desktop version
• Does not render well on desktops and laptops
• Requires a different domain name
• Uses different URLs than the desktop version
• Optimizing for search engines requires extra effort
• With two separate websites, requires more maintenance than a responsive website
• Updating content on two websites takes extra time
• More cost-effective to develop than a responsive website
• Loads faster than a responsive website

Responsive Website

• Designed for devices with different screen sizes
• Not device-specific
• No variation in content because there’s a single website
• Automatic rendering based on the device in use
• A single website simplifies maintenance
• No need for additional domain names or separate URLs
• Optimizing for search engines is simpler
• Updating content takes less time
• More expensive to develop than a mobile website
• Loads slower than a mobile website

What About Mobile Apps?

Data shared by Statista shows that there has been a steady rise in the number of mobile app downloads over the last few years, increasing from around 140 billion in 2016 to about 255 million in 2022. In addition, the time that Android users spend on apps is way more than on browsers. Some of the sectors that have already embraced what mobile apps have to offer include gaming, shopping, entertainment, education, finance, and utilities.

Unlike a mobile-first or responsive website that people access using web browsers, a mobile app is software that users need to install on their mobile devices. Since there is more than one operating system that powers mobile phones, with iOS and Android being the most common, you will need to develop apps for them separately.

Mobile Apps vs. Responsive Websites

Mobile apps and responsive websites come with their fair share of advantages, and there is no clear answer to which is better. To determine which of the two might work well for you, you need to take a close look at the purpose you want it to serve and your target audience. While some stats indicate that mobile users prefer apps over websites, they don’t account for all the variables that might relate to your industry.

Some of the key benefits of responsive websites are:

• They are more cost-effective to build than mobile apps
• They are easier to update
• They are available for all web users

The advantages of getting a mobile app come in the form of:

• Enhanced features
• Better functionality
• A great user experience
• A more intuitive user interface
• Offline accessibility
• High levels of customization

Conclusion

If you are targeting mobile phone users alone, you may go for a mobile website that allows you to make changes. However, you will run two websites and this might be costly in the long run. Alternatively, you may choose to get a mobile app. If you want a website that works well across all types of devices, responsive web design is the ideal way forward. While the mobile web design vs. responsive web design comparison shows that each option has advantages and disadvantages, the latter seems to come out on top.

Opting for responsive mobile website design is a great way to reach out to people who use different devices to access the internet, but you need to make sure that your website delivers a good user experience and meets the needs and expectations of its target audience. Since creating a great website is easier said than done, partnering with a professional web design agency might be in your best interest.