Responsive vs Mobile Optimize
I been support for responsive design concept all the while and very much pushing it when the customer enquiry for it, but recently one of the project let me rethink about this approach. There are some use case that an Mobile Optimize web site is much better then a Responsive website.
My client project is actually an e-commerce site , so we go through the whole development & setup with a responsive design, after launching it and going through the Google Analytics data, it seem like more than 60% of visitor is coming from mobile, since is the first time I handle a project that targeted on a specify country, so I drill in the GA report to find out more.
This make me re-think our responsive design approach , things to take into consideration is when high traffic coming from mobile doesn’t necessary means they are all for high-speed 4g with smart phone, lots of them might be using some lousy phone with low-speed connection.
So what’s the responsive design having problem on this ?
- We are doing top to bottom approach – having nice desktop view, then a tablet view follow by mobile view, so the mobile view actually loading lots of unnecessary element.
- Because of the first point, it’s kind of slow to load on mobile with a low-speed connection.
- Responsive design will be good if all your user are on smart phone , if your user’s device are kind of mix, the user experience are not really that great.
- There are a lot of effort to put in, if we want the responsive design to work extreme well in mobile.
- The great purchase flow on the desktop is hard to represent on the mobile through responsive design.
So currently I m looking into a mobile optimize solution, so far I m really consider Mobile Store as the solution, although the licensing structure is a bit weird, in order to use the mobile theme you need to opt for a license that support for 30 site. Testing on the preview, the theme make Woocommerce very mobile optimized , might need some testing to see will this convert into more sale.
