A summary of the pros,cons and other comments on Responsive Web Design, specifically in context of college and university website.

1. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 1
Thoughts on Responsive Web
Design: Pros, Cons and Other
Considerations

2. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 2
1. Site design considerations
2. Site production considerations
3. Site maintenance considerations
4. Site performance considerations
5. SEO considerations
6. Marketing considerations
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Thoughts On Responsive Web Design: Pros, Cons and Other Considerations

3. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 3
Let’s take a look are RWD from the point of view of its impacts on
different stages of a website’s development, lifecycle and
marketing effectiveness.
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Thoughts On Responsive Web Design: Pros, Cons and Other Considerations

4. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 4
 Creating one design in RWD, serving all platforms VS
multiple designs for mobile, tablet, desktop or app saves
time and money.
 One RWD design across all platforms provides a common
user experience across those platforms.
 For example: A student discovers an interesting educational program
using their mobile phone on the bus trip home, then go on their
desktop at home to further investigate and enter into a website that
has the look and feel and sensibilities of the one that drew them to it
in the first place.
 That “scent trail” as referred to in conversion optimization, is a key
factor in producing a positive outcome from a prospective student's
web experience.
Site Design Considerations
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Thoughts On Responsive Web Design: Pros, Cons and Other Considerations

5. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 5
 Implementation of RWD requires a complete site redesign &
reimaging of web applications across desktop & mobile. It is
an all or nothing approach that cannot be phased in partially
 Building effective navigation in RWD for small screen
formats (i.e. smartphones) can be a serious challenge.
Sacrifices in design are often made to make it work
effectively
 Image optimization in RWD across multiple formats can be a
problem
Site Design Considerations
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Thoughts On Responsive Web Design: Pros, Cons and Other Considerations

6. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 6
 Advanced page functionality, for instance, forms,
applications etc. can be difficult to implement.
 If user intent and/or user requirements are different across
platforms, RWD can be difficult to apply, particularly if a
mobile page or app is optimized for touch or lead
conversion.
Site Design Considerations
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Thoughts On Responsive Web Design: Pros, Cons and Other Considerations

7. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 7
This example of a mobile app from JP
Morgan Chase Bank demonstrates:
 how a mobile device is intended to be
used quite uniquely versus the
purpose of a desktop site.
According to the company, consumers
used this feature to deposit over $4
billion dollars and the app has won
several awards including the highly
renowned Webby Award in 2011.
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Thoughts On Responsive Web Design: Pros, Cons and Other Considerations

8. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 8
Production of a RWD site is generally a more complex project
management challenge than a traditional site, takes longer to
build and the approvals process, because it is quite different
can be more difficult to manage.
 A range of hardware platforms (and resolutions) are
required to thoroughly test your RWD site.
 Emulators or simply scaling a browser window can be used
but they never seem to be quite the same results as
working on the real thing.
Site Production Considerations
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Thoughts On Responsive Web Design: Pros, Cons and Other Considerations

9. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 9
One of the real benefits of RSW is that:
it is much simpler to maintain one code base than two or
three.
This has important implications on:
 the skill set requirements of your team ( internal or external)
 the amount of time required for maintenance of your site
 your management resources to oversee them.
Saving time, money and human resources is a high priority for
minimally resourced higher Ed Marcom or IT web groups.
Site Maintenance Considerations
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Thoughts On Responsive Web Design: Pros, Cons and Other Considerations

10. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 10
Site Performance Considerations
RSW sites are generally slower to load than m.dot mobile
sites.
In the example below:
 the responsive mobile and responsive full web page take
approximately the same time to load.
 Even though the mobile page only displays part of it, it needs the time to
download all of it at the front end.
An optimized mobile site with the same content would typically
load much faster.
 And the really important part is that every extra second of delay in page loading causes a
reduction, (reported up to 7%), in conversion rate
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Thoughts On Responsive Web Design: Pros, Cons and Other Considerations

11. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 11

12. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 12
SEO Considerations
Google has publically declared that it likes RWD sites , and
apparently ranks them higher.
 A RWD site will reduce your bounce rate on mobile visitors which
increases lead generation and ultimately trickles down to increased
registrations.
 Because there is only once site, RWD sites typically get better page
indexing
 Inbound links are directed to one site.
 All of the above typically improve your search engine page rankings
 If visitor search intent is different for your mobile vs desktop site
RSW has its limitations.
Source: Higher Education Marketing – Thoughts On Responsive Web Design: Pros, Cons and Other Considerations

13. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 13
 The example below demonstrates how keywords can be
very specifically mobile and local search oriented. Often
these are very different keywords than you would typically
optimize your desktop site for.

14. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 14
Marketing Considerations
Analytics for RWD sites are collected under one Google
analytics account making it much simpler to oversee your
site’s visitor traffic, goals and marketing ROI.
 The example below demonstrates how traffic, funnel and goal
conversions can be analyzed by screen size.

15. Thoughts On Responsive Web Design:
Pros, Cons And Other Considerations
Slide 15
Questions?
1.514.312.3968
info@higher-education-marketing.com
Visit our Website: Higher Education Marketing
FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK
FOLLOW US ON LINKEDIN
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER
FOLLOW US ON PINTEREST
FOLLOW US ON GOOGLE+