Mobile web access is exploding, with a staggering 50% of people in the UK accessing websites via their phones, a figure that grows to 71% in the 16 to 24 year old bracket. Clearly, a mobile strategy is needed, and the web industry believes it has the definitive answer.

If the phrase “Responsive Web Design” (RWD) makes a question mark materialise over your head, you are not alone. In the world of web design however it is something of a hot topic. Industry evangelists and thought leaders are promoting it as no less than the future of web design. Industry guru Jeffrey Zeldman describes it as “an evolutionary milestone in the development of web and interaction design as a practice and as an industry.” While designer and pundit Andy Clark - in a fit of hyperbole - even suggests that if you don’t use such techniques you’re not a “real” web designer.

So what exactly is it? Basically it is a method of having the layout of your website appear differently depending on the dimensions of the screen it is viewed on, for instance, making everything fit into a single column on iPhones, or have large text when viewed on a giant screen. My initial reaction was one of nerdy glee, because to be honest, it is pretty cool. The poster child of RWD practices is the Boston Globe, try resizing your browser and you can see the site morph accordingly. Cool no? Web designers made wonderful use of the technology on their portfolio pages, demonstrating how we could have not one, but three or four layouts for a single website.

However, the thrifty among you will have already noticed the the fatal flaw in this approach. Three or four layouts also implies three or four designs, not to mention the added development expenses. Which all adds up to the overall cost of a website. A cost, that ultimately, must be passed on to the client. In these frugal times the crucial question is ultimately - from a business perspective - is it worth it?

While I believe that each project should be tackled from a case-by-case basis, for the most part, I’ve not found the economic arguments for RWD compelling, and here is why.  

1) Smartphones have largely solved the mobile web problem

The “mobile web” was long prohesised by industry commentators. Although we have technically speaking had it for over a decade, it was largely rubbish; held prisoner inside poor connections and the infuriating Kafkaesque interfaces of “feature phones”. Then came the iPhone and multi-touch, and changed everything; precisely because in the words of the late Steve Jobs it could view the “real” Internet.  

People haven't voted with their pocketbooks to sign up for video on their phones. These phones aren't capable of taking advantage of it. You've used the internet on your phone, it's terrible! You get the baby Internet, or the mobile Internet -- people want the real Internet on their phone. We are going to deliver that. We're going to take advantage of some of these investments in bandwidth.

People voted for the “real” Internet in their millions. And while not all websites work elegantly on smartphones  - notably ones built in Flash - for the most part if the site is well thought through to begin with, the contents of them are quite accessible with a few taps and pinches.

Meanwhile, the plans for media queries (the technology RWD is rooted in) date back over a decade to early 2001 - before even the iPod was released and the iPhone was even on the drawing board - when the mobile web was a much different place and its future was highly speculative. Although there have been a number of redrafts of the media queries specification since then, not a great deal has changed in the fundamental approach, and media queries have been left, to an extent, as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist the way it once did.

2) If there is a business case for supporting mobiles, it may justify an entirely exclusive mobile site.

When formulating any online strategy we like to look at the numbers. Interestingly, while most of our clients have an steady average of 4.5% of visitors from mobiles - including iPads, others have as much as 25% of their visitors from smartphones. Clearly, enough to justify a mobile specific solution.

So what is the best approach in this case? If you look at the research of usability guru Jacob Nielsen you can find some solid research and recommendations on how to tackle mobile websites. His latest recommendations are, designing a separate mobile site with limited features, having tighter content, and offering the users a choice to go to the desktop version of the site (which is not the case with Responsive Design).

Responsive Web Design also advocates a “mobile first” approach, meaning your desktop website is developed with mobile in mind. This seems to make sense, given the rise in mobile access, but in actual fact, it places limitations on what can be achieved on a desktop website. That does not seem prudent when your site only gets 4.5% of their traffic from mobiles.

Also, if you take a closer look at Nielsen’s research, the usability gulf between “mobile” sites and “desktop” is not as big as many would think. In Neilsen's research the success rates for achieving tasks on mobile and desktop sites on phones are:

• Mobile site success rate: 64%
• Desktop site success rate: 58%

This is compared to an average of 84% on desktops and 76% success rate for Apps.

So a 6% difference in usability success. As mentioned before, generally speaking only around 4.5% of our client’s traffic is from mobiles, that means an overall 0.27% increase in usability. Is this really worth a significant increase in budget? For a separate mobile sites or for Responsive Web Design? Most designers would not see these figures compelling if this discussion were about supporting the hated Internet Explorer 6.

In instances where our clients do get significant traffic from mobiles, a 6% usability increase is a number worth worrying about. In such cases we can also identify the pages users are looking at. So far, this has indicated that the site needs an entirely new emphasis on mobile, not just a new layout, and we would look at developing mobile only websites with a distinct UI, from which the user can “veto” and view the desktop version if they so wish. Perhaps an App may even be a more sensible way to invest resources. Perhaps both. 

The lesson I take away from the stats is that some sites by their very nature draw mobile traffic, and that others simply do not, and it will not grow proportionately in line with mobile web access. The context not just of the user (such as physical location, levels of attention etc) but also of the site itself must be taken into account.

3) No matter how much we want it to be true, people don’t browse the web on their TV.

The other side of Responsive Design is the ability to have a website display differently on large screens, such as HD Televisions. However much like the mobile web, internet access from  TV has been with us for a number of years, to consumer indifference. This is possibly down to popular platforms such as Playstation 3’s and Wii’s having interfaces that are totally inadequate for browsing websites. Some of you will know the pain of of trying to navigate a website using something designed to play first-person shooters. If this situation ever changes, and we find users suddenly flocking to access sites on their TV, I will wager it is because of a technological leap akin to multitouch and the App store. We'll be designing interfaces in 3D for Kinect 2's or something, meaning a need for a whole new type of UI again, not just a new layout.

You could also argue that Internet on the TV is already alive and well, its just in the form of xBox Live and PSN. The thing is, its primarily used for watching movies on Netflix and pwning n00bs in Call of Duty, not perusing B2B websites or reading your blog.  Again, the social context of the site is important.

Even with technological leaps, I suspect it is unlikely anyone would ever want to view written content on the TV. In many ways, text on the TV is a step back to the days of Ceefax, and users are unlike to go for it unless it is for a specific service like football scores or the weather (also available on your smartphone or tablet). Unless of course its a video blog, in which case we're talking things like Google TV as a content distributor, which is again a whole other animal.  

Just because we can design for televisions, doesn’t mean we should.

4) Tablet-like devices may come to dominate the mobile web

The sudden use of tablets (a euphemism for “the iPad”) for browsing the mobile web has exploded in the last year. Mashable report that “Approximately two-thirds of that 6.8% [of Internet traffic in the US] came from mobile phones, while the remaining third came from tablet devices” a figure that will only grow, given the enormous and continued success of these devices.  

Tablets exist in a weird quantum state where they both are and aren’t representative of the mobile web. They are lumped with iPhones and Blackberry’s in Google Analytics because they are - in ontological terms “mobile” - but they can display the “real” web with considerable ease. Arguably, easier than on a desktop computer or laptop. It seems like a Black Swan the pundit’s did not see coming. What if the lions share of the growth of the mobile web is in the tablet market, not smartphones? What then for RWD or mobile sites?

For the above reasons, and other technical issues regarding loading times too dry to cover here, I am skeptical of the ROI of Responsive Web Design as a blanket approach to dealing with the mobile Internet. And in their rush to be the first to roll out responsive sites, some have not thought about the consequences for, say, how responsive sites will fit alongside heatmap analytics, which need a fixed layout in order to be effective.  

Such misgivings have not stopped us from experimenting with the technology for times when it is needed. It is interesting technology, and certainly slick, but despite the growth of the mobile web it has for me not yet made the case to become a standard feature. My gut feeling is that while RWD undoubtedly has its place in the web developers toolbox, the fervour with which industry thought leaders are promoting it feels oddly like the way hardware companies are selling 3D Televisions. From a certain perspective its a "natural evolution" of the medium, but on the other hand its expensive, a bit of a pain to implement, and feels like it is just there to have something new to sell.