Is 2013 the Year of the Responsive Theme?

Published

January 9, 2013

10 Comments

The growth of mobile devices have forced many a web designer and web developer to consider responsive layouts are part of their services as more and more businesses are getting savvy about their mobile customers.

Personally, I do not believe that it’s hit critical mass in terms of adoption or even awareness but it’s fast-becoming a consistent conversation with the organizations that I consult with and is nearly always listed as a “need” or high on the desirables list.

So, is this the year of the Responsive WordPress Theme? Will it become a defacto-standard in WordPress theme development? I’m not entirely sure but I know that adoption this year will increase in tremendous leaps and bounds – even WordPress.com is celebrating responsive with their recent release of a number of themes that sport responsive layouts, sharing some statistics of the percent of responsive layouts available in their overall library:

Of 220+ themes in the WordPress.com Theme Showcase, over 50 themes are responsive: they provide a tailored layout depending on the device you’re using.

Not quite 25% but I’m sure that existing themes will be updated with responsive layouts and new and upcoming themes will have it out of the box.

What are your thoughts? How have you seen your own engagement with responsive layouts with WordPress Themes? Are your clients becoming more savvy and are you constantly putting this into your estimates?

What about your own blog? Are you sporting a responsive layout? Currently, we do not have it (and we have a reason) but for sure we’re looking into it in our refresh of the design.

There are 10 comments

January 9, 2013 #

Dave Donaldson

I think this will absolutely be the case. Take my own wife’s recent blog redesign. She made it very clear to me that it had to look great on all devices, if not for everyone who will read it, but for her as well because she spends a lot of time on her iPhone and iPad.

In my opinion if you’re building a WordPress theme and it’s not responsive, you’re wrong. Mobile is such a big part of our society now that you *have* to take into account smaller-sized devices and how a website will look and behave on them.
- January 9, 2013 #
  
  John Saddington
  
  What is the address to your wife’s blog?
  - January 9, 2013 #
    
    Dave Donaldson
    
    Her blog is http://livelovemom.com. She ended up using the DailyJournal theme from ElegantThemes in part because of its responsiveness.
January 9, 2013 #

Michael Malphurs

I have found that 25% of my clients are asking for responsive sites… The rest are asking for separate mobile sites, as they are unaware of responsive sites and their capabilities. Once they learn of them, they are quite interested… The usual barrier becomes the higher price point for development
January 9, 2013 #

mickmel

Around 75% of the sites we developed last year were responsive, and that’ll likely be 90%+ this year. Like Dave, my blog and my wife’s blog (as well as the various other blogs I write for) are all responsive now.
- January 9, 2013 #
  
  John Saddington
  
  i’m not sure any site i launched personally was without it.
  - January 9, 2013 #
    
    Marty Martin
    
    Same here. I won’t even look at a theme if it isn’t responsive. All the custom themes we did in 2012 were responsive as well.
January 9, 2013 #

Josh Wagner

Just as a personal observation, I think if you’re not considering responsive, you’re crazy. There are probably exceptions that make the rule about not using responsive, but those should be few and far between. When you look at mobile and tablet usage, there’s no alternative. Besides, designing responsive upfront keeps you from tacking on a mobile site that may or may not keep the design feel of the site.
- January 9, 2013 #
  
  John Saddington
  
  Agreed. It’s tougher to find reasons NOT to do some sort of responsive layout.
January 9, 2013 #

Brian

I’d say 2012 was the year of the responsive theme. Hopefully 2013 will be the year of doing responsive the right way : )

A ton of pretty hacky “responsive” sites that look like noone ever actually looked at them from a phone (in a vertical layout) and commercial things that are just 3 adaptive layouts based on media queries, but not truly responsive.

We’ve all got a lot to learn for making websites really well with responsive. And for once I don’t think it’s just a trend, but an advancement in the technology itself, and more importantly, the browsers that support it.

How do you stay on top of your WordPress game?