Responsive Vs Adaptive Approaches to Web Development

Having a website brings with it numerous benefits. Though we should all know that by now, there’s shockingly a huge portion of business owners that have no clue about the importance of having a website an online presence. Running a business without a responsive or adaptive website means that it will lose out on great opportunities. A website itself is a great marketing tool and can easily be developed by hiring services of a top web development company.

The reason why there is so much emphasis on having a responsive/adaptive website is that it connects consumers with your business and helps them know what you can offer.

They will struggle to reach you without it. As a result, your business will go out of the competition. Something no business owner ever wants to see.

However, before we start comparing the two web design approaches, remember that one is not better or worse than the other. Each has its strengths and weaknesses and the final choice comes down to the project requirements.

Responsive Design

The most common web design approach. It helps create adjustable layouts by using CSS media queries and modifies the design of a website according to the different screen requirements.

The biggest advantage of responsive approach is that it only requires single design template for all devices, allowing designers the ease of using only CSS for content rendering on different devices. Besides, the wide availability of open-source toolkits makes it even friendlier for developers to build responsive sites.

The design and testing stage can be a little tricky, as it is often hard to alter the user experience for each device.

Often, we come across responsive sites that don’t exactly fit together. To avoid this issue, developers use responsive website architecture in combination with mobile first approach for added efficiency. Later on, tablet and desktop cases come into play for progressive enhancement.

The reason responsive design is in such a high demand is that it covers all devices. A typical user is often only using one device to access your site. So, if they have to wait long for all of its elements to load, they’ll just move to another site. Simply put, quality of the design affects performance.

It is a well-known fact that conversion rate drops significantly when users have to wait a few additional seconds. If your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, more than 50% of visitors will never return to it.

Given all these details, it’s pretty obvious to see why the responsive design has become an integral part of web app development world – no business site can thrive without it.

Adaptive Designs

The concept of adaptive design is pretty much similar to that of responsive design. The only difference is that the adaptive approach only targets specific devices and contexts. It uses JavaScript to add the desired feel and customization to web pages and comes in two forms: client-side adaptive and server-side adaptive.

Client Side

The adaptations in this approach occur on the client side.

Ideeli is a great example of client-side adaptive approach.

One of the plus points of this approach is that the same set of HTML and JS can be used across multiple devices for testing.

Adaptive sites don’t require to be built from the scratch. Instead, you can capitalize on existing content to create ideal layouts. However, to create those layouts, the developer must have solid grasp of JS.

Finally, since this technique is a like a layer on top of the existing code, it requires constant maintenance as the whole website evolves.

Server Side

This approach comes in various ways and is as effective as client side. The only difference is that server-side offers more customization with its distinct templates for each device.

Additionally, there is a myriad of server-side plug-ins available for major CMS and e-commerce platforms such as Magento.

Of course, many top web development companies prefer responsive over adaptive approach as they are not yet ready to completely switch to the latter. However, the fierce competition and the desire to stand out will force more companies to master all three in order to meet their clients’ requirements.