The smartphone has become an integral part of modern life. Phones have long ceased to be ordinary communication devices. Today, they are smart gadgets in which people focus their work, studies, communication and various hobbies. Statistics of web browsing from mobile devices continues to grow.

For most users, browsing websites on a smartphone screen has become the easiest and most convenient way. Therefore, sites that don’t adjust to these devices and don’t have adaptive versions are losing visitors.

One of the main tasks of website developers is to come up with an adaptive design for a dozen resolutions. To do this, modern web technologies are used that allow the site to adjust both for viewing on a desktop computer and for downloading on smartphones.

What is an adaptive design?

The concept of adaptive design implies the presence of such a website design, which will allow it to adjust and equally correctly load pages on all screen formats. The user in this case will be able to work with a resource from a desktop computer and a tablet or phone. In this case, it will not have to expand some area of the page to better see the information posted on it.  All links will be displayed correctly and will be well highlighted for navigation on them. All inscriptions and icons will also be clearly and brightly highlighted, so that they can be clearly seen even on TV screens with a wide diagonal.

The main characteristics of an adaptive design are flexibility and functionality, which allow owners of different devices to work with it equally effectively. After all, the main goal of such web design is to provide a universal view of content on different devices without creating additional versions of the website.

Why do I need an adaptive version of the website?

About the purpose of creating an adaptive version of the website today knows almost every Internet user. But to highlight the main tasks of such adaptation for a more clear idea of the benefits of its development is simply necessary:

1. Ensuring that visitors of different devices feel comfortable working with the site. All guests of your resource should feel equally comfortable.
2. Increase mobile traffic. High mobile traffic is a good indicator for any web resource.
3. Prompt placement of useful information. News, announcements and press releases are opened by modern users exactly on smartphones. If you want to make sure that your information does not go unnoticed, place it only on the adaptive version of the site, which will give the greatest coverage of users.
4. Increase the number of sales. A very large percentage of purchases are made from mobile devices today.
5. Increase the efficiency of website promotion. Resources not adapted for smartphones, lose a lot of visitors, the percentage of bounces is increasing.

The web resource begins to lose positions in the rankings, as adaptability is one of the direct factors of ranking.

Advantages and disadvantages of adaptive design

Despite the many advantages, the adaptive version of the design can have a number of disadvantages. But development in a professional agency will save the site from any possible errors. Specialists will develop a friendly website design that all visitors will be happy with.

Let’s start with the advantages of adaptive design, as there are many more. The universal version of the website, adapting to different devices, has the following advantages:

1. Save time, effort, and money on maintaining multiple web resources. With one universal version, there is no need to waste time and resources on maintaining several that are suitable for some specific devices.
2. Increases the number of impressions in search engine analytics. Thanks to the synchronization of requests not only from computers but also from mobile devices significantly increase the performance of the website Google analytical reports.
3. Simplifies SEO-optimization. Only one URL is used for each page, which makes all links user-friendly in the end
4. Easy administration. To change the price of a product, it’s enough to enter a new price in one place, so it will be reflected everywhere.
5. Facilitates promotion in social networks. Thanks to the same page URLs, you can get more reposts and likes on all popular social networks.
   

The disadvantages of adaptive design in the first place include the difficulty of combining it with the already functional version of the resource. Sometimes it is easier and cheaper to create an entirely new, adapted project.

Another problem of adaptive web design can be a heavy load on the pages of the site because of JavaScript files and CSS styles. As a result, the pages of such a web resource weigh more. But all of these disadvantages are eliminated in practice with a professional approach to site development.

Adaptive layout principles

Like any other modern development, the universal layout has several unique features and characteristics:

Flexibility
Despite the similarity of the design of the mobile version with the desktop one, it is more compact and flexible. Which allows information blocks to shift vertically, in order in a single thread, when opened on a smartphone. This makes it much easier to view pages from phone screens.

Different units of metrics
The same extension will look different on different devices. That’s why you should set the scale for each specific device separately.

Checkpoints
To keep images from slipping when they’re loaded on different gadgets, special control points are used. They can be used to lock images in place until the site is opened on a new device.

Size limits
For texts and images to be displayed correctly across the entire display, the maximum width and height of pixels are set. Thus, in the mobile versions, they are not stretched and remain well-readable. The user must see only high-quality information, the study of which will significantly increase the time he spends on the website.

In addition to these key features, mobile responsive design has many other important characteristics. These include proper use of fonts and graphics, nesting of objects, proper media queries, etc.

Adaptive layout types

There are 5 main types of responsive design layouts, let’s consider each of them in detail:

Dynamic
This is the easiest type to implement, which is understandable for most users. When using it, all the key elements are compressed to the optimal size for the screens of mobile devices. Instead of compression, blocks can be arranged as a ribbon, one after another.

Repositioning Blocks
If your site has many columns, their arrangement will change depending on the width of the screen. When the screen shrinks, the sidebars move to the bottom of the layout.

Switching layouts
The longest and hardest way requires developing a separate layout for each resolution of adaptive design on smartphone screens. But for users, this method provides the simplest and easiest way to explore the site.

Simple adaptive markup
Owners of small websites often resort to using these types of adaptive designs when it is only necessary to scale typography and images. This method reduces time and costs but also deprives the resource of flexibility.

Toolbars
Not the most popular method, which simulates mobile navigation, when the additional menu is visible in any position of the screen. Users are not accustomed to this adaptive layout of the design on the website, as it is closer to them on mobile devices. Therefore, it is used very rarely.

The difference between the adaptive website and the mobile version

To answer the question “Which do I prefer – the adaptive design or the mobile version?” you need to compare them and highlight the key characteristics. Mobile solutions have a number of disadvantages:

• The need to download or buy software;
• separation of traffic into two flows;
• the need to integrate materials from the website;
• the need for new solutions for each OS.

Adaptive website design service will allow you to get a web resource with one address, one design, unique content, and one management system. In this case, the resource will be equally correctly loaded on all devices. The disadvantage of an adaptive version of the layout of the website only in its relative novelty, which does not allow many developers to master it. But thanks to the prospects that it offers, it is actively mastered and successfully applied in practice.

Adaptive design examples

Examples of modern adaptive design can be images that scale equally well with different browser sizes. This is done in ways such as displaying images according to browser width, maximum and minimum width (max-width, min-width), and relative values.

Development options and examples of adaptive versions

You can order a high-quality adaptive version of the website from professionals, who will quickly perform all the necessary work on your resource, so it would be equally correctly displayed and function on all devices
If the uniqueness of a web resource and its design is not crucial for you, use a ready-made design. In this case, you won’t need to order a translation of the CSS adaptive design from professional studios. But part of the code will have to be rewritten yourself. Therefore, this budget development option is not suitable for everyone.

Making your adaptive design can be done with the help of frameworks, which will act as a framework with the main blocks. As a result, you can get not only experience and skills in designing web resources but also a unique set of templates.

Conclusion

The concept of designing an adaptive version of the site has made its way into modern development. Specialists develop such a design to fit the interface for different screens. This is the most effective way to set up a website to work equally effectively on regular computers and modern smartphones.

In our Digital Agency, we make adaptive designs for different types of customer websites. Due to our design, your website will find a new audience, will become popular and will increase sales and your profit.

The final cost of the adaptive version of the website in our agency will be different from the non-adaptive version. It will be calculated depending on the type of your resource and the selected technical solutions. Customer’s requirements for the size of the adaptive design and the types of its elements are also taken into account and included in the ToR. After its approval, we proceed to work.

You can order responsive design in our agency right now! You just need to call us at the numbers listed on our website or leave an online request. Our managers will contact you, tell you about working conditions and take into account all your requests.