Responsive Design Versus Adaptive Design: Know The Difference
Many people think that responsive design and adaptive design are the same thing because responsive and adaptive sound similar and have similar definitions. This is not true, the best website designing company in Delhi that offers the former may not offer the latter because they are completely different concepts. The only similarity between the two design concepts is that they are both meant to create mobile-friendly sites. But they are created with different methods and provide different features. Understanding the differences between them is the key to knowing which type of design you should use for your site. Here are the differences between responsive and adaptive designs:
What Is Responsive Web Design?
In responsive web design, the website detects the device the visitor is using to access the link to adapt its design elements to the screen’s size. This allows visitors to view and navigate the site on desktop, smartphone and tablet with ease. The designer does this by adding percentage values to the CSS codes and using fluid grids.
What Is Adaptive Web Design?
In adaptive design, the website detects the device the visitor is using to access the URL and displays a template accordingly. The designer develops different templates for each device so that visitors can use the site on any device without difficulty. It’s also called dynamic serving.
Similarities Between The Designs
Both designs are mobile-friendly and allow users to visit a website using the same URL on different devices. In both cases, loading time is saved because your visitors are not redirected to another link for a mobile website.
Which Design Is Better?
They both have some advantages over each other due to which even experts disagree on which one is better. Google recommends responsive sites over other mobile-friendly options but many experts note that dynamic serving sites rank higher on SERPs. You should consider the following points to choose between the two:
Cost:Developing a responsive website is much cheaper than developing an adaptive one. This is because in responsive design, only one website is developed that adapts to different screen sizes. In adaptive design, different templates are made for different devices. This requires more skills and a large team which costs more.
Time:Responsive design beats adaptive again because designing one template is easier and takes less time than creating multiple themes for different devices.
Loading Speed:Adaptive design wins against responsive. This is because adaptive sites use templates optimized for the device being used. The content is also optimized for low-resolution screens. A responsive template does not compress the image size, simply scales it down to the screen size, This increases the load time of the page.
Customization:With dynamic serving, you can customize the desktop template for one purpose and mobile template for another. In responsive design, any changes made to it will be updated on all devices.
Compatibility:Other than desktop, tablets and smartphones, you can use dynamic serving to create templates for feature phones and multimedia phones to make your site compatible with them. You can even create templates for different OS and browsers for better performance. Responsive themes don’t work well on older devices and browsers and are limited to desktop, smartphone and tablets. On the other hand, if you only create templates for desktop and smartphone with dynamic serving, your site’s performance on tablets may suffer.
Reach:Because dynamic serving caters to multimedia and feature phones, it gives you better reach than responsive templates. After all, developing and underdeveloped nations still use old phone models and lack the latest network technology.
In conclusion, if you have enough budget and want to reach people in underdeveloped and developing nations or offer your customers different on different devices then adaptive design might be a good choice. But if you want to reach local or national audiences and want to offer the same services on all devices at lower costs then a professional website designing company is the better choice.
Now that you understand the difference between adaptive and responsive design, you can choose which method suits you best when hiring the best web designing company in Delhi. Keep in mind that not all companies provide both.