Responsive Design vs. Adaptive Design: Which Is Better for Online Stores?

Care about how your store looks on mobile devices?

Did you know that there are two very different approaches to designing your online store? If you build an ecommerce store without knowing about responsive vs adaptive design… you’re going to run into problems.

Whether you realise it or not… the way your store looks and functions on mobile devices has a huge impact on your ecommerce sales.

Mobile devices account for over half of all ecommerce traffic, yet 53% of mobile users leave sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load.

That’s why it’s so important to get your store design right.

If your store doesn’t work perfectly on phones and tablets your conversion rates will suffer. Pages that take too long to load will tank your SEO and bounce rates will skyrocket.

Fortunately, responsive and adaptive design were created to solve these exact problems.

The big difference? One of them is much better for ecommerce websites.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Responsive Design vs Adaptive Design
• What Is Responsive Design?
• What Is Adaptive Design?
• The Differences Between Responsive and Adaptive Design
• Which Should You Choose for Your Online Store?
• SEO Considerations For Your Design Choice

Responsive Design vs Adaptive Design

Let’s kick this off with the standard vocab lesson. Just so we’re all on the same page 🙂

What Is Responsive Design?

Responsive design means that your store uses one design that adjusts itself to fit any screen size.

So if someone visits your store on a desktop… tablet… phone… you name it. They’ll all see the same website just adjusted for their screen size.

Here’s how it works.

Responsive design uses a mixture of fluid grids, flexible images, and CSS media queries. CSS media queries allow your website design to detect the size of the screen and “respond” by stretching or shrinking itself to make everything look good.

The beauty of responsive design is that everything is built using just one website. No matter what device your store is being viewed on.

That means you never have to worry about different versions getting mixed up. There’s only one set of pages to update and maintain. Making your life much easier!

Responsive design is so popular because it’s the standard these days. Every certified Shopify Agency will build responsive stores unless you tell them otherwise.

In fact… 90% of all websites are built responsively now!

What Is Adaptive Design?

Adaptive design serves up different fixed layouts depending on the size of the screen it’s being viewed on.

Think of responsive design like one elastic outfit that fits anyone.

Adaptive design is like having 6 different outfits sized for petite, small, medium, large… etc.

Unlike responsive design which uses CSS trickery to stretch and shrink the same layout… adaptive design creates unique layouts optimized for specific screen sizes.

When someone visits your store, the server detects their screen size, and then serves up the layout specifically designed for that size.

Adaptive designs require you to create each layout individually. Usually three layouts… One each for mobiles, tablets, and desktops.

That means three times the work when building your online store. Three times the work to update and maintain your store moving forward.

The Differences Between Responsive and Adaptive Design

Alright let’s get into the good stuff. Here are the big four differences between adaptive and responsive design.

• Responsive design automatically adjusts to any screen size. Adaptive design only supports specific screen sizes you designed for.
• Responsive design uses a single code base. Adaptive design requires you to create and maintain multiple layouts.
• Adaptive design is expensive. Responsive design saves you money.
• Adaptive design can load faster. Responsive design relies on your browser to “figure out” the screen size and adjust on the fly.

NOTE ABOUT SPEED: In reality, the speed advantage you’ll get from adaptive design is minimal. Especially when you realise sites that take more than 3 seconds to load endure checkout abandonment rates of 53%. So you still need to speed optimise either way 🙂

Which Should You Choose For Your Online Store?

If you’re building an ecommerce store from scratch… chances are responsive design is best for you.

Here’s why.

Google Loves Responsive Design

Google has literally said so themselves.

Google wants to crawl one version of your website. With adaptive design… you create multiple versions of the same page.

This can cause headaches with duplicate content and diluted link equity. Google may also end up favouring one version over the other. Which isn’t great if that version looks bad on mobile.

Responsive design creates a single version of each page… so Google isn’t confused when crawling your site.

Google’s Help Docs clearly state:

Responsive websites are generally easier to rank in search results because they do not require duplicate content. Site owners with responsive websites will only need to create and maintain SEO elements for one URL. For example, there is no need for a mobile-specific sitemap.

When completing mobile-first indexing Google will render the mobile version of your page and use that for indexing and ranking. Responsive design makes this incredibly easy for Google.

Since there is only one mobile version of your page…. Google won’t have to guess which version it should use.

Responsive Design Saves You Money

Believe it or not… but choosing adaptive design can cost you thousands more.

Adaptive design requires three times the build effort. You’ll need to create individual layouts for desktop, tablet, and mobile.

You’ll also need three times the maintenance costs. Updating your store means changing each layout individually.

Responsive design is cheaper to build and maintain because you only need to do everything once.

Sets You Up for Future Success

Mobile ecommerce is going to generate $4.122 trillion globally by the year 2025.

You have no idea how screen sizes are going to evolve over the next few years. By choosing responsive design your store will automatically adjust to any new screen sizes.

But if you go adaptive… you’ll need to build new layouts as new devices are released.

SEO Considerations When Building Your Store

Is your design approach impacting your SEO? Absolutely.

Choosing responsive design means Google can crawl and index your mobile site just as easily as your desktop site.

There’s only one URL for Googlebot to crawl. And all your content lives on the same page.

Responsive design passes SEO cleanly.

Adaptive design often creates duplicate content issues. Not to mention the fact that links point to multiple URLs for the same page.

Website owners just like you have to put in serious technical work to avoid hurting their SEO with adaptive sites.

Closing Thoughts

Responsive vs Adaptive design…

Both will make your store look awesome on mobile devices. But only one is the preferred method for modern ecommerce stores.

If you want your store to play nice with Google, be cheap to build, and easy to maintain… build responsive.

You’ll save money, time, and avoid headaches in the long run.

A lot of brands out there are adaptive… but is it because they made the right choice? Or did they just get sold that approach?

At the end of the day… responsive design is future proof.