Every recent survey suggests that in about three years, more people will use mobile than desktop computers to access the web.

That would be fine if smartphones, tablets and normal computer screens all displayed web content nicely, but the vast majority of pages don't display correctly on all mobile devices. Layouts that look good on a large screen often break when you look at them on a smartphone. Images and navigation menus disappear off the edge of the page, columns lose their alignment and text shrinks to unreadable sizes.

So businesses risk losing customers when people find they cannot access the site properly, or when the navigation breaks and the layout no longer flows as you'd hoped.

Until now, a typical solution to this problem has been to make a completely different site just for mobile. The front page of the BBC mobile site, for example, cuts out images and the lede (the American name for blurb) to leave just headlines and navigation links. Dive into a story, and the content is simply laid out as a series of blocks stacked on top of each other.

Responsive web design

A better answer is something called responsive web design. This is a collection of techniques developers are starting to bring to their work to ensure that what displays well on a big screen also works on a smaller screen.

Responsive web design can be used to shrink images, reduce the number of columns, adapt the font size, and even eliminate pieces of content altogether when they're likely to break your layout or consume too much bandwidth or processing power on mobile.

Progressive enhancement

All that sounds like designing from the desktop downwards, adapting your layout and content progressively for smaller screen sizes.

But there's a strong argument in favour of working the other way. Fans of mobile-first believe in progressive enhancement upwards from a basic design that works for mobile. That tends to reduce the number of requests for content your mobile makes to the server (which is good), but is not something you can easily impose on an existing site without scrapping the whole thing and redesigning from scratch.

Some responsiveness is better than none at all

Even if the underlying code to make perfectly responsive web design isn't yet ready, site owners shouldn't wait around. Some responsiveness is better than none at all. There are well over 11 million smartphone users in the UK, and it's safe to say that businesses are already losing out when people visit their sites. So you should prioritise a few basic features of your website, even if you don't make things pixel-perfect first time. Site navigation, key messages, contact page, and font sizes are among the areas you might want to focus on first.

Get in touchIf you're planning a brand new mobile friendly web site or would like to make your existing site mobile friendly,  call us on +44 191 3713 103 to discuss how Tripledub can help.