What is Responsive design?
Also called: Responsive web design, RWD
The short answer
Responsive design is building one website whose layout adapts to every screen size, from phones to wide monitors, instead of separate mobile and desktop sites.
What people say: “mobile friendly”, “works on phones”.
Responsive design, explained
Fluid grids, flexible images and media or container queries let the same page rearrange itself: columns stack, navigation collapses, type scales.
Most web traffic is on phones, and search engines index the mobile version of a page first, so responsive is the default expectation rather than a feature.
Questions people ask about Responsive design
What is Responsive design?
Responsive design is building one website whose layout adapts to every screen size, from phones to wide monitors, instead of separate mobile and desktop sites.
How do I know if my website is mobile friendly?
Open it on a phone and check that text is readable without zooming, buttons are easy to tap and nothing scrolls sideways.
Related terms
Mobile-first is designing and building for the smallest screen first, then adding layout for larger screens, so the core experience works on phones.
Media queryA media query is a CSS rule that applies styles only when conditions are met, such as a screen width, dark mode preference or reduced-motion setting.
Container queriesContainer queries style an element based on the size of its own container rather than the whole screen, so components adapt wherever they are placed.
WebsiteA website is a collection of linked web pages published under one domain name, stored on a server and viewed in a web browser.
Part of the Web Encyclopedia by Apex Flow Digital. Definitions are general knowledge, kept current, with no invented statistics.