Responsive real estate website design has entered the realm of standard practice. This is very different from the way websites were designed earlier and represents the future.
To see responsive web design in action, open a webpage on a desktop browser and slowly widen or shorten the browser. The layout will adjust itself to the width perfectly on its own. Even if you make the browser resembling the size of a mobile phone, the page will display everything in order.
Responsive web design ensures your website works well on the screen of mobile phones. As the statistics suggest, the number of people using mobile phones to access the Internet is steadily growing. Real estate brokers and agents who have worked on optimizing this channel are sure to benefit.
Mobile Path to Purchase report published by Google has provided interesting insights. Search engines are the starting point for mobile phone users (48%), followed by branded websites (33%) and branded apps (26%). Companies with responsive websites are likely to gain more leads gaining distinct competitive advantage on the market.
Responsive real estate websites ensure easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, scrolling and panning. The sites can instantly respond to any movements you make adapting to the screen they are on display without compromising functionality or aesthetics.
The technique brings down the development costs as you don’t need separate website for mobile phones. Regardless of the device, these websites have one url, single content, one code and mobile queries.
The web technology would target the breadth of each user’s browser to determine the space available and the way website should be displayed. Breakpoints are set up to customize for ranges that define specific displays. For instance, the developers would set up the breakpoints for desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile phones.
Features like proportion-based grids and flexible images enable websites with responsive design adapt the layout to the viewing environment.
Google itself recommends webmasters to follow the industry best practice of responsive web design that includes serving the same HTML for all devices and using CSS media queries to decide the rendering.