Whether on a smartphone or desktop, your site is easy to view and navigate.
The WashU Web Theme is responsive, which means the page layout responds and adapts to different screen widths. This optimizes your site for use on mobile devices such as phones and tablets, in addition to laptops and desktops.
What does it mean for a site to be responsive?
Responsive design is an established best practice on the web. Here are a few ways it helps your site:
- Navigation menus go mobile.
On larger computer screens, site menus appear across the header and down the right sidebar. This makes menus highly visible, with the tradeoff that they take up significant real estate. On phones and other smaller screens, menus are combined under a single menu button (sometimes called a hamburger icon) at the top right of the screen. - See the guide to menus »
- Text and images scale.
If a web page is not responsive, visitors have to zoom and swipe to see tiny text or tap the correct link. But when a website is responsive, the text and image sizes automatically adjust to the size of the screen. That way, your content is easy to read without pinching and zooming.
- Google approves.
When Google crawls a website to rank its pages for search, it actually crawls the mobile version of the site. That’s because Google wants its top search results to be useful and navigable, whether on a desktop or mobile device. Google deducts major points for sites that don’t have a mobile version. Fortunately, since your WashU Web Theme site is responsive and therefore mobile friendly, you’re all set! - Learn about optimizing for Google search »