What Costs are Involved When Switching to a Responsive Web Design?
Responsive
web design can cost a lot if you make the wrong choices. Costs involved while
switching to responsive sites depend on the website design and development
company you choose. The first cost encountered when implementing a responsive
website design is decoding the codebase. Disassembly is further needed for all
of the styles and reassembling these into the correct order costs additional
money. Then, there are the markup aspects and requirements to be considered.
- Complexity Matters
While
a lot of costs may seem manageable to begin with, the solution here is not that
simple. Real life pages and sites have their complexities and these trigger
additional problems. Responsive web designs change the way one thinks about web
pages as one is trying to accommodate as many devices as one can. One needs to
know not just how people interact with your site, but also how your site
interacts with them. When redesigning a site, you need to be aware of the
context.
Testing,
bug fixes and maintenance cost even more. Introducing new codes into different
layers of your site namely HTML, JS and CSS requires its own share of
troubleshooting and debugging. Making a site responsive, however, is not just
about style. Updating the codebase costs money, too.
- Focus on User Experience
Prior
to designing any website, it is important to understand the type of business
for which one needs to have an optimised website. For any website to be
completely effective, it is essential to see it across different devices. User
experience is of primary importance. Factors that come into play include brand,
popularity, functionality, work industry, audience demographics and client
conversion rates. Each of these factors is important for pricing your
responsive website accurately. Responsive web designing is not just costlier,
but it also more lucrative in terms of the revenue and profits a mobile-first
site generates, so it eventually balances out.
If
the requirements are of a basic site, a template requires less work and costs
less. But custom-developed responsive website design package is suited for the
retail industry. The pricing of such unique, original websites is higher. For
any business, it is difficult to assess how much a bespoke, responsive site
would cost. However, the cost is pegged at anywhere from $5000 to 25000 by most
experts, based on the size of the site and the complexity of the design.
- Breakpoints & CMS Costs
On
the one hand, breakpoints play a very important role in determining the cost of responsive web design.
Based on how many breakpoints are required in a site, the price is decided
accordingly. A complex website with a lot of content will need many points to
be able to reduce itself to a tablet’s screen size. A simple website, on the
other hand, will require fewer breakpoints and entail less cost. An equally
important consideration is the content management system or CMS chosen.
This
is vital for effective responsive web design. Customers should be able to read
the same data across devices and confidentiality of customer information must
be assured. A good CMS goes the distance when it comes to helping the website
user.
A
super responsive site should ideally be able to handle massive amounts of
traffic and record orders. If your product is well-established, a responsive
website can really help in increasing traffic and expanding the reach of your
business still further.