Responsive? That’ll cost you…

Today, I heard about someone who’d been quoted for a website with responsive design as a chargeable extra.

Google

Google recently introduced a change in their algorithms that demotes fixed-width sites further down search results in favour of responsive sites. The reason for this change is usability – as more and more of us consume sites on devices of varying sizes, it’s not a pleasant experience being presented with a website that can’t be viewed on a smartphone or tablet without constantly scrolling back and forth.

Since the focal point of any website is (or at least should be) the visitors, this is a fantastic move by Google. Personally I’ve no idea why they didn’t introduce it sooner.

dinosaur

Responsive design was first demonstrated way back in 2004. Or, in terms of how quickly technology tends to move, before dinosaurs roamed our planet. With the introduction of CSS3 media queries about five or six years ago, responsive / fluid / elastic sites became much easier to build, eventually becoming the norm by 2012.

In a nutshell – responsive design is not new. It’s not a mystic art known only to select code wizards that meet every full moon inside a stone circle. It should be the default for any build, because fixed-width sites are simply not relevant anymore and haven’t been for a number of years.

So if you’re looking around for someone to build your next website, just remember: responsive design is not a chargeable extra.

It’s your right.