Summary: Responsive design is more than just the latest buzzword. It’s a design principle that you must apply to both your business website and your web applications. Learn why it’s so important, and a couple of easy options for making your site and apps responsive.

Regular readers of this blog might notice that the site looks different today. We just redesigned our site from the ground up!

Besides the modern look and feel, we took this step for an important reason: Responsive design has become a necessity. In fact, we didn’t stop with our site. We recently made both our site, and m-Power’s generated applications, responsive. Why is this so important? Why should it matter to you?

For those unfamiliar with the term, let me explain it and tell you why it matters to your business.

What is responsive design?

Responsive design means that a web site/app adapts to the device on which it is viewed. So, if you view a responsive web app on your tablet, it adapts to that screen size. If you view that same app on your smartphone, it changes to fit that device.

As an example, try viewing this article on your smartphone. Or, just resize your browser. You’ll see that it automatically adapts to your device or the new browser size.

Why use responsive design?

Mobile is the fastest growing trend in history. It’s impacting both the consumer and business worlds in ways we haven’t seen since the rise of the internet.

The fact is, we can no longer build web sites or web apps for a single device. These days, you don’t know how users will access your site/app. Web access has changed from a PC-based activity to a variety of devices and screen sizes. Your website and your web apps must adapt.

How can you go responsive?

You can go responsive the hard way or the easy way. I recommend the latter.

What’s the easy way? If you’d like to make your business website responsive, there’s no need to build it from scratch. Find a responsive theme, or start with a responsive framework (like Twitter Bootstrap). These options are inexpensive (or free), and save you weeks of work.

If you’d like to build responsive web applications that adapt to any device automatically, check out m-Power. It automates both the coding and the responsive design, letting you build web apps in minutes. You can learn more about it here, or even take it for a free test drive.