What is responsive design?
Responsive design means one set of pages that rearranges itself to fit whatever screen it is opened on — phone, tablet or desktop — instead of a second, separate mobile site. Images resize, menus collapse, and the visitor never has to pinch and zoom to read a price.
Why it matters to a shop
Most people who look up a local business are holding a phone. If your page was laid out for a laptop, they arrive to text the size of a grain of rice, a phone number they cannot tap, and a menu running off the right edge — and they leave before they find your prices. Search engines also read the phone version of a page first, so the phone layout is the one that represents you whether you designed it or not.
How to check your own site on a phone
- Look at the real thing, not a preview. Open your published address on your own phone, over mobile data, and judge what you actually see — an editor preview on a desktop screen is a drawing of your site, not your site.
- Read the page without zooming: business name, what you sell, address, opening hours, prices. Anything you have to enlarge to read is anything a customer will skip.
- Tap every button that earns money — call, directions, book, add to cart — then turn the phone sideways and reload. If a column slides off the edge or an image lands on top of the text, the layout is fixed-width, not responsive.
Common mistake: Thinking responsive means building a second mobile site: it is one set of pages with one set of content, and two sites just means two places for your opening hours to go stale.