Jay Moreno

The Unnecessary Debate: Responsive vs Standalone Mobile + Desktop
Every day I see and hear many discussions about the different approaches to mobile web design, the main two being responsive vs using a stand alone mobile website alongside a desktop site, but it does frustrate me at times that people overlook that fact there are other approaches to mobile web design than just these two...

Both have their own pros and cons, and the debates on which is best continue. What i find is that since Google "recommends" responsive design, I believe that this statement causes many people not to look beyond anything else but responsive!

Other Design Approaches
However, there are other design approaches that can be considered and that are fully supported by Google - so let me introduce you to an approach that often gets overlooked but is actually fairly simple to deploy and really offers the mobile end user a great experience!

Responsive on Steroids
This approach to mobile web design is referred to as RESS and or Adaptive... for me this approach is like taking the best of what responsive design has to offer and the best features that standalone mobile sites have and basically mashes them together - the result for me is like Responsive on Steroids!

WordPress for Mobile
In it's simplest form take for example a WordPress site and install a Responsive theme - this will work great for your desktop and tablet visitors, but now add in additional theme that has been specifically designed and optimized to work even better on mobile devices - now you add the final piece of the jigsaw and install a plugin which switches and activates the correct theme according to the type of visitor coming to your site. Showing the default responsive theme to your desktop and tablet visitors and your optimized mobile theme to your mobile visitors.

Watch the video to better understand what I am talking about...

There was another discussion on WF in a different forum that i recently posted this video but felt that this mobile marketing section of WF is probably a better place for it...

I am a great advocate for this type of design approach and have been implementing it now since around 2012 - If you review a lot of the top 100 Alexa sites you will find they also use this type of approach too.

Why This Post?
I am doing this post simply because I want to make people understand that you don't necessarily have to have a Responsive v Stand Alone Mobile Site Mindset when it comes to mobile... there are other options/solutions available.

Responsive+
Yes, we still use a responsive approach for desktop users and tablet users but we add to this and enhance/compliment the initial responsive design with an adaptive/ress layer specifically designed and optimized for mobile visitors, just like you may have done with a standalone mobile site, but in this instance its not standalone its part of the same site, using the same urls just as your responsive site does and the same content as your main site, it just formats the HTML and CSS differently based on the device accessing it, which in turn gives you much greater control over how a mobile visitor sees your site and interacts with it.

Stop Restricting Yourself
With this type of approach you free your previous limitations of creativity and design, with not necessarily having to think about multiple break points, or juggle your media queries, or worry that changes to your responsive desktop layout may affect the mobile experience of your responsive layout when viewed on a mobile device. You don't have to be concerned with managing two sets of content like you would do with a standalone site. For us especially on bigger sites having a theme for desktop users and tablets and an independent theme specifically for mobile devices makes things much more efficient and less complicated to implement and mange.

Informed Decision
Whether you choose to use this type of solution or not is entirely up to you - but at least you can make a good informed decision about what works best for you and your client and perhaps equally as important your end user!

Your Pros & Cons
Additionally I invite anyone to constructively discuss your own approaches to mobile web design and contribute to this discussion with a view to helping others perhaps share your own thoughts on the pros and cons of mobile web development.

In all I hope this helps someone today!

Cheers,

Jay

PS Please note you can implement this approach with currently free and available plugins and themes listed in the WordPress directory!

PPS - I don't actually expect much of response as I am fully aware people don't tend to read these days, who has the time to read these days! Especially long posts like this, but at least the info is out here if you are interested! lol

Jay Moreno

looks like i am not alone in regards to this thought process...

Is Google's Mobilegeddon Scaring Website Owners Into Bad Design Decisions?