Responsive Website vs Mobile Version
Since the beginning of the mobile devices boom the developers and the website owners were stuck between a rock and a hard place: whether to leave the mobile versions of their websites along with the “full-featured” ones or to make sites adaptive and self-adjusting to different screen sizes?
So, what is better for your dealer website? Separate website mobile version or responsive web design? Which one to choose? Let’s try to find out.
Website mobile version
To make a website easy for the mobile users programmers often create separate versions of the same websites. They are specifically targeted to the users with smartphones or tablets. In 99% the mobile version represents a shortcut basic website version. The most common practice is to redirect the mobile users to a special subdomain (m.example.com, mobile.example.com, etc.).
The mobile version advantages are as follows:
- User-friendliness. The mobile version is usually greatly simplified compared to the desktop version, so a user shouldn’t go to the back of beyond to get the information he/she needs. It is a great advantage for mobile search ranking.
- Speed-up. The mobile version is loaded fast. It is essential for those users who still utilize GPRS or a weak 3G. Speed is one of the most important ranking factors for mobile devices. Both Usability and Speed force Google to show a mobile friendly website in its search results. Choice. More often in the mobile version a user has the ability to go to the full version of the website.
The mobile version disadvantages can be:
- Several addresses. There are different addresses for the desktop and mobile versions of the website. For some users it may be a very annoying factor when they need to remember one more address. There are also problems with the search engines. Google can fine you for the duplicated content. To avoid this SEO specialists have to use such meta tags as rel=«alternative» and rel=«canonical». Besides, when users click on the link in Google search mobile results, they will be taken to the desktop version. If the mobile version of the page does not exist, the users will get an error message.
- Limitation. Building a separate mobile website means getting rid of a part of the content and functionality. In addition, you can have two different sets of the content which may negatively affect the overall website information.
As practice shows, the creation of mobile website versions works good, especially for large projects. As an example, Amazon uses a special, mobile version of their website.
Responsive web design
The responsive web design is the interface scaling according to the user’s device. It allows the website to have different styles (or style sheets) depending on the device screen resolution, its size and other characteristics.
The responsive web design advantages include:
- One interface. The website has one and the same look in different browsers and on different platforms.
- One URL. The website has one and the same URL. It helps SEO-optimization much.
- One website. The developers maintain and support one site only. It allows you to reduce the time spent on the design and content.
- Traffic minimization. Unnecessary JavaScripts can be removed from the HTML code, so CPU, memory and cache will be freed on the mobile device. HTML and CSS can be specially optimized as well.
- The use of targeting. It is possible to make a webpage layout for each device.
The main responsive web design disadvantage is the following:
- The download speed. It is significantly reduced due to the high-resolution images and other visual elements which are necessary for the website look. Your designers will always be limited with this factor, as the complex visual elements can “slow down” the page loading on the mobile devices.
For the search engines it makes no difference which website version you use: a mobile one or a responsive web design. The main thing that really matters is the correct configuration and the convenience for all mobile users. Autoxloo can help you with your choice, strategy and realization. We provide the high quality development and support to any of your ideas. Our high tech, modern tools and creative minds are always at your service!
