Adaptive vs. Responsive Web Design: What’s the Difference?

Long gone are the days when a household only relied on a single computer to browse the internet. If you wanted to shop, chat, or search for information, you had to wait your turn. Things are totally different today.

Tablets, smartphones, and laptops all come in different sizes, processing capabilities, and screen layouts. Adapting your website to fit into every screen is a challenge in and of itself.

If you want to provide your user base with the best experience possible, you need to choose between adaptive and responsive web design.

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Why Does Adaptive and Responsive Web Design Matter?

In simple terms, your website needs to fit people’s screens properly. It can’t look the same on a 20-inch desktop monitor as it would on a 6-inch iPhone screen. Most of the information will be cut off or blurred. Furthermore, the loading speeds and the lack of functionality would be maddening.

The article below goes into the differences between adaptive and responsive web design and their advantages and disadvantages, as well as some other things to keep in mind.

What Should You Consider Before Choosing a Design Approach?

The advantages and disadvantages of these two design approaches depend largely on your resources, including money, time, and the skill sets of your employees.

For example, let’s say you are based in New York. You have a strong budget, but your developers are already busy with other work. It might be easier to hire a web design company in New York and have them go all out on your adaptive design. On the other hand, if you have limited time and funds, a responsive approach may be better.

Furthermore, you might have noticed that, according to your analytics, people are only browsing your site through tablets, phones, and computers. That means you only need three layouts for adaptive design. On the other hand, if they are using many different devices evenly, you should invest in responsive web design.

What Is Adaptive Web Design?

Let’s start with adaptive web design—commonly abbreviated to AWD. Now, AWD works by using predefined layouts that are selected based on the device or viewport characteristics. It works by having breakpoints that break, expand, and contract based on the device that has been detected. Its core feature is being based on preset layouts.

Usually, the following width layouts are used:

320px
480px
760px
960px
1200px
1600px

These are examples of commonly used breakpoints, but the appropriate breakpoints depend on the website and its audience.

What Is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive web design, or RWD, changes dynamically. Instead of having preset layouts, you have the same site for every device. However, the site itself will use a flexibility-based approach, staying fluid and changing the size and layout of its elements based on the device being used.

In practice, that means a layout composed of three columns can switch automatically to two columns to fit the appropriate device screen. It’s always the same content and the same design.

What Are the Advantages of Adaptive Web Design?

The core pros of adaptive design are the following:

Can provide a fast experience when implemented effectively
Sometimes you don’t need that many layouts in the first place
Greater control over layouts (and content)

One of the great benefits of AWD is that, once a designer has already made some preset layouts, the website can provide a fast experience. They just deliver the code needed for a specific screen size, and unlike responsive designs, they don’t have to calculate and change as much, if at all.

These same layouts mean that the developer will know exactly what a website will look like on the devices they are building for. This further allows developers and designers to tailor content to a specific device (like pushing more smartphone-centric content on layouts dedicated to phones).

Furthermore, check your analytics. If you’ve noticed that your target audience only uses desktops and iPhones, you won’t need to build a layout dedicated to tablets.

What Are the Disadvantages of Adaptive Web Design?

However, there are some issues that can spring up, like:

Need to build layouts for multiple devices
Uncommon screen sizes can be trouble

If your analytics show that your audience uses many different devices, you need to accommodate all of them. Building multiple layouts can mean a lot of work for your designer. If you limit these layouts, you also limit your audience.

Even if you don’t have, say, tablet users now, not creating a layout for them is a gamble—you’re potentially excluding a piece of your audience.

Finally, even if you invested all that time and effort into the six common layouts, you still might not provide the best experience for people who have unorthodox screen sizes on their devices.

What Are the Advantages of Responsive Web Design?

There are several advantages to responsive design:

Easier to create
Accommodates any screen size, even uncommon ones
Can make it easier to provide a mobile-friendly experience

For developers, it can actually be easier to create a website that uses responsive design. Instead of building multiple layouts from scratch, a designer uses just one setup. They will work on updating and developing just that one layout, without having to worry about multiple layouts.

Furthermore, since it’s responsive, no matter what kind of new screen type shows up, you won’t have to worry about it being completely unresponsive. Just a few tweaks to the code here and there, and you’re all set to go.

Finally, a responsive design can make it easier to provide a mobile-friendly experience, which is important because Google uses mobile-first indexing.

What Are the Disadvantages of Responsive Web Design?

However, responsive design can also be difficult because:

Less control over layouts
Can have performance issues if not properly optimised

A responsive website can still have performance issues if you do not properly optimize its images, scripts, or other resources.

Furthermore, responding to any device is a blessing, but it can also be a curse. Since it is difficult to test every possible screen size and device configuration, some people might end up with a sub-par experience. This also means websites like these might require more long-term coding updates.

Conclusion

Remember that everything you do when it comes to web design needs to be tailored to your user bases’ experiences. Providing them with the right information doesn’t matter much if they can’t actually see it.

If people have to work hard to make a purchase, read your content, or contact you, they probably won’t do any of those things. By choosing the approach that best fits your website and users, you can provide a better experience across different devices.

Also Read: 5 Landing Page UX Improvements That Increase Conversions