The numbers make the case before any argument does. CNNIC data shows 64% of internet users in the United States go online from a phone, including people working away from an office; in China the figure is 90.1%, and 77.1% of those users reach search engines from a phone.
Another set tells the same story from the user’s side: 72% of people use several devices, at least 60% expect a company’s desktop site to work properly on mobile, and 66% of mobile users say the mobile experience is worse than the desktop one.
What that means for a marketing site
Display is fragmenting, and it is not going back. For a brand or marketing site, the consequence is that responsive design is not a styling preference but the baseline: the same site has to give a decent visual experience on whatever device the visitor happens to be holding.
The alternative is the pattern people already resent, where moving from one platform to another means installing an app before anything displays properly. Responding directly, without an install, is what makes the site usable and what makes the brand look competent.
What responsive design is
The term is still fuzzy for a lot of people inside the industry, so: responsive web design means the page is designed and built to respond to the user’s behaviour and device environment, the platform, the screen size, the orientation.
In practice the page adapts to a desktop, a tablet or a phone without being zoomed, and reading it takes a thumb and a scroll. That is the whole idea, and it is worth separating from a separate mobile site, which is a second product to maintain.
What it saves
For a business entering the mobile market, the saving is concrete: a responsive site removes the cost of a separate mobile build, along with the time and people that would go into it. One site, maintained once, serving every screen.
Experience over decoration
A site should look good, and looking good is not the objective. What decides conversion is whether the visitor finds what they came for without effort, which means the service comes first and the aesthetics support it.
That ordering is what gives a marketing site a working life. Design that only decorates produces something that is admired once and never used; design that serves produces enquiries.
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