Responsive Web Design vs. Adaptive Web Design – Which Should I Choose?

Since 2013, the battle between adaptive and responsive web design is still going strong. When creating a website for your business, it is imperative to understand the difference between the two to make the right choice. Let us look at each of these web designs in detail for a moment.

Responsive Web Design

One of the primary goals of a responsive website design development is to ensure that the site is fully functional irrespective of the screen size and resolution of the device used. Singapore web designers who are experts in this kind of design have a good understanding of the scaling process and composition of the different displays.

According to MediaOne, a leading SEO Singapore company, a responsive design entails the use of fluid layouts that have the ability to automatically scale to ensure all the website elements fit diverse resolutions. With the high smartphone penetration in Singapore, it is recommended to go for a responsive website design. More importantly, a responsive web design eliminates the need to continuously update the site to make it compatible with the new smartphone devices.

Adaptive Web Design

Adaptive web design involves the use of layouts that are designed with specific display sizes and resolutions in mind. That is, instead of responding to the device’s display, the layout automatically identifies the resolution of your browsing window and loads a display code that matches it. This means that the same homepage may appear differently on multiple devices that have varying screen resolutions. Concisely, the same CSS file is applied to multiple devices.

Verdict

According to a study by Web Designer Depot, responsive web design layouts outperform the adaptive web designs. However, adaptive web design is an ideal choice for complex web applications as it fine-tunes the website layout to match the particular resolution of the device. Also, by choosing an adaptive web design, you can be sure that the complex order form or embedded apps on your site are displayed well on both mobile and desktop browsers.

That said; the adaptive design cannot be developed for every single resolution particularly because of the rampant increase in smartphone resolutions. Therefore, it is recommended to choose a responsive web design that can automatically adapt to the current and future smartphone screen resolutions.

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About the Author

Tom Koh

Tom is the CEO and Principal Consultant of MediaOne, a leading digital marketing agency. He has consulted for MNCs like Canon, Maybank, Capitaland, SingTel, ST Engineering, WWF, Cambridge University, as well as Government organisations like Enterprise Singapore, Ministry of Law, National Galleries, NTUC, e2i, SingHealth. His articles are published and referenced in CNA, Straits Times, MoneyFM, Financial Times, Yahoo! Finance, Hubspot, Zendesk, CIO Advisor.

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