So What actually Responsive Web Design is and Why is it important?

Responsive Web Design is the term coined by Ethan Marcotte in his article in A List Apart. With the advancement of technology and emergence of various web-based devices, it became imperative to build websites that can yield same quality in all devices and browsers. Today, from desktops to laptops to smartphones, people use various devices to use internet. In such situation, the old trend of building websites that is compatible to only one device or browser is of no use today. And because there are so many new devices emerging,it is impossible and impractical to build websites for each device. Hence, Responsive Web Design has emerged as the latest web design trend that allows users across a broad range of devices and browsers to have access to a single source of content, laid out so as to be easy to read and navigate with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling. Responsive Web Design describes a website-building process that utilizes the same set of code to display properly on desktop, tablet and smartphone browsers.

netmagazine.com has ranked Responsive Web Design as #2 on its list of Top Web Design Trends for 2012 following Progressive Enhancement which was ranked #1. Responsive web design simplifies the task making the websites more flexible,accessible and user-friendly.

Elements of Responsive Web Design

As introduced/coined by Ethan Marcotte in both his article “Responsive Web Design” as well as his best-selling book, one needs three elements to make a site responsive:

• A flexible/fluid grid
• Responsive images
• Media queries

What are these terms then?

Let us have a brief overview on this:

Adjustable layouts – What makes a responsive web design worthy of all the attention is the enhanced flexibility of the layouts and design in order to make it usable on different screen resolutions. The fluidity of the web design improves the navigation placement on the site in accordance with the screen size. Moreover, the columns in a responsive web design also scales as per the screen size or the browser size. The Tiny Fluid Grid is a handy tool that facilitates your web design as it allows you to make grids up to 1200 px maximum width.

Responsive images – Use of images can be a problem when viewing in a device with smaller screen size. To overcome this problem, responsive web design comes to the aid of the designers. It allows them to have adjustable images that fit different screen sizes and devices. Some of the tools that can help them in resizing the images include fly Dynamically,

Media queries – Since the evolution of CSS3, media queries has become a significant element of the responsive web design. This is a handy element that allows web designers to create multiple layouts using the same content.

Examples of Responsive Website Designs

The examples below will illustrate more about the concept of the Responsive Web Design:

• Think Vitamin
• CreativeDepart
• Hicks Design
• CSS-Tricks

So why do we call it the King then? Well the answer is clear and we all know it. Currently there are 900 million users using Facebook globally. Data given by Socialbakers.com as of 2012 says that currently in Nepal only, there are 13,96,740 users which makes it 70 in ranking of all Facebook statistics by country. Among them, 69% are male users and 31% are female users. Similarly, the largest group is currently 18.24 with total of 628,533 users followed by users in the age of 25-34. At a personal level, people generally use FB to connect with new friends and reconnect with old friends and families especially with those who lives miles away from them. Facebook has minimized this gap between people and their loved ones allowing them to share each other’s “What’s on your mind” to sharing photos, events, notes and other various links. Each individual using Facebook must be quite thankful to it for making it so easier to get connected to the social world (with friends and families).

Besides interaction and personal sharing with friends and families, Facebook is extensively used as a valuable social media marketing tool. From different NGOs/INGOs to business organisations, they all use Facebook to promote their brand and services among the targeted people. Whether it be any business or non-governmental organisations or commercial brands or celebrities, they all have their own Facebook page where they update about themselves and the activities they are doing and hence promote themselves. Well how simple is it !! Its free and Its easy and unlike other advertisements and promotions, it involves regular and direct interaction with the users/fans and that is what makes it the most effective social media marketing tool. Just not the Fanpage, through FB, different social and commercial campaigns are conducted too.

Data from Socialbakers.com (2012) reveals the following brand pages as the top Facebook pages with the most momentum in Nepal :

1. Ncell with 225131 fans and 4143 PTA ( people talking about it)
2. Acetravels.com with 199320 fans and 1091 PTA
3. Bollywood News with 156188 fans and 2534 PTA
4. SongsNepal.com with 146348 fans and 4520 PTA
5. Ujjayalo Network with 24430 fans and 2731 PTA

Amazing isnt it ? It reveals Ncell has been the most successful brand page in Nepal with the highest number of fans and PTA. And it must be because Ncell fanpage is regularly updated and is quite interactive. It regularly promotes and updates its services and information to the users. This is just one example. There are many various Nepal based FB pages created which is gaining momentum among people.

So this is FB, our true friend indeed. It is not only helping people to get socialised but also helping them to promote and increase their business brand value in the market.

Data Source : Socialbakers.com