Pardon my sardonic tone in today’s post, but unfortunately this term is not going away as fast as I would have hoped this year. A couple of months ago, I posited the notion that we shouldn’t rush to embrace this buzzword into our technology strategies.

Of course, many companies didn’t feel the same way. Now I am scrambling to help educate our customers on why it’s not a big deal that our customers are bragging about using this shiny new toy in web development.

That is a polite way of saying damage control.

So what happens when you are faced with this problem? An easy option would be to quickly rush out a competitive solution to keep up with the Jones. Hopefully, you can tell I am not an advocate of this

Instead, explore interesting techniques like this article on Smashing Magazine. Author Radu Chelariu offers an easy way to detect what kind of device your site using media queries. I would offer that this sounds more adaptive than responsive, but I won’t argue with the opposite stance.

Point being, the websites that look cool as you drag one of the corners around the screen take lots of time and effort. The more elements you have in your web product, the harder it is to make it responsive. Customers don’t want to have to pay for multiple versions of the same site, nor do they want to pay for supporting them (even if it is in house).

Look at what you want to accomplish with your mobile product and how it should differentiate from your entire line. Analytics are your friend, as is education. Use both to find the sweet spot with your stakeholders and then find the tools to accomplish them. 

I can’t wait to show my dev team media queries and find out if it could help keep the flames at bay.