Designing Responsive Web sites: the factors to be considered in response-type web site construction

Article Description: responsive web design needs to consider the 5 major budget factors.

The author of this article, Brad Frost, a mobile web strategist and designer and front-end development engineer at the New York Digital Interactive advertising company R/ga. The author mainly makes a simple comparison between the response Web site and the individual mobile website, and sums up some budget considerations of the construction response website.

First of all, I would like to start today's theme with a real example. There was a website project that didn't take mobile devices into account in the early stages of construction, but in the ensuing design process, about 80% of the customers asked the question: What would the site look like on the ipad? In the face of the whole problem, the entire development team began to panic, so the whole project timetable needs to be set up, the budget has been increased, and ultimately the effect is not satisfactory.

The moral of the story is that all kinds of mobile devices should be taken into account from the start of the project, and be aware of the unpredictability and foresight of the future, because the old things are always going to be eliminated and new things will always emerge.

Do you choose to design a responsive web site or create a dedicated mobile site?

In fact, this topic has almost been the conclusion of the coffin, with the popularization of 3G, more and more people use mobile phones to surf the internet. Mobile devices are more than desktop devices, become the most common access to the Internet terminal, responsive web design has become a trend. But I still want to make a simple comparison between the two, building a response site is not cheaper than the cost of mobile sites? Initially, the cost of building mobile Web sites and response sites may be similar, but because mobile sites have more than n different versions, subsequent data updates and maintenance of equipment require a lot of cost input, and response Web sites do not have such a problem. In addition, small flat panels like the Galaxy Note or large-screen phones are still in the gray area, whether they show the mobile version of the page or display the desktop version of the page, really let the user dilemma.

Budget factors to be considered in building responsive web sites

Compared to the individual mobile site, although the response to the follow-up site maintenance costs will be relatively low, but this does not mean that the response design is perfect. And it's a matter of budget, every penny is important, so it's necessary to make an effective budget, and here are some factors to consider in building responsive Web sites:

1. Keep abreast of the latest developments

Keep everyone abreast of the latest developments in the industry and make sure that every person on the team understands what the response design is. If you don't know the current situation, take a moment to understand what the current trend is, and then discuss how to work together.

2. Enough time to cope with sudden changes

This is likely to be the most important factor to be considered in the budget. Many developers must be familiar with the typical "waterfall mode" development process, "waterfall mode" only in accordance with the standard desktop browser design, in addition, almost no consideration of any other design development environment, as the problem continues to accumulate, have to slow down to deal with a variety of difficult problems. This is its biggest drawback. The advent of responsive design with Cross-platform synchronization makes those inflexible linear processes look useless in a multiple-screen era.

Of course, because response design is a cross-platform synchronization, close collaboration is absolutely necessary for a successful response design project relative to the "Waterfall mode" development process. And throughout the development process, give the team enough time to sort through the inevitable, thorny design issues.

3. More testing and QA time

The era of web design only in accordance with standard desktop browsers is gone, and as the workload increases, so does the test and QA time, so when budgeting, time issues are also factors to consider. In addition, what devices the entire Web page will support and optimize for those devices also need to be considered in advance, because there is a difference between "support" and "optimization". This is not feasible if you want to optimize for each device. Given the limited budget, inclusive and forward-looking solutions seem particularly important.

4. Purchase test equipment

The actual operation and testing on the device is necessary, which means that there is a budget to be put into the test equipment.

5. Understanding the Channel Strategy

Many project planners like to break down the whole project when designing a responsive web site, first developing a desktop version, then a mobile version, and finally a tablet computer, which has been disconnected from the nature of the response design. The real response design takes these cross-platform issues into account from the outset, allowing for more detailed early-stage framing, design, and testing.