Responsive + Adaptive
Good Gallery websites use both responsive and adaptive technologies to deliver incredible performance across all platforms.
In both responsive and adaptive design, mobile users are presented with the same content across all devices. However, the technical approach for determining the type of device is managed differently under a responsive architecture versus an adaptive architecture.
Comparison
With responsive design, visitors download bits of code that detect the kind of device being used and the viewport available. The browser then uses that data to determine how to display that information on that device.
With adaptive technologies, instead of downloading and processing code on the visitor’s computer or device, the server determines the device being used prior to downloading any information and then provides only the information needed by that device.
By detecting the type of device prior to the download, Good Gallery realizes much better website performance than what can be achieved by responsive sites because a responsive design downloads and processes code that is not relevant to mobile devices.
Performance Benefit
One reason why adaptive mobile sites are arguably superior to responsive sites relates to visitor experience. With a responsive design, programmers and designers are often forced to make compromises in website design so that their websites can work equally well across all devices.
Although making compromises within a responsive architecture can admittedly still yield a website that looks good on all devices, responsive developers can’t achieve the same level of precise control afforded by a company working with an adaptive architecture.
SEO
In terms of SEO, there is no difference between adaptive and responsive design. Search engines strive to ensure that their search results endorse only those websites that share the same information across all devices. And they also want to make sure that that visitors will have a good overall experience while using that device.
With that in mind, search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo all recognize both adaptive and responsive architectures and do not give ranking priority to one architectural approach over the other.
Conclusion
For many companies, a responsive website is certainly good enough to meet the needs of their customers. However, for our team, good enough is never good enough.
Although an adaptive architecture is more complicated to architect and takes longer for us to develop than similar responsive designs, our team believes that the performance benefits and functional superiority of an adaptive website architecture outweigh those associated our additional development costs.