The latest news from Meantime IT

Lou's been getting very excited about her latest top secret project which we're not allowed to talk about. We'd love to tell you all about it but we can't (it's a secret), but we can tell you that it's allowing her to hone her responsive design skills.

Responsive design is a relatively new technique in website building which means a website will fit the screen whether it's viewed on a PC, tablet or smartphone, and whether it's held horizontally or vertically. Currently, those who care about how their sites look may develop two versions, one for PC/Mac and one for mobile, but responsive design goes one step further.

The design process factors in every viewing variable and adjusts the site's style accordingly. So rather than scrolling across to read the end of a sentence, the site will automatically adjust to the screen's size and dimensions. This may seem trivial, but if you've ever tried to fill in a form on a tablet or phone via a site that's been optimised for PC viewing, the scrolling backwards and forwards and up and down can quickly become tiresome.

While this may seem like a minor aspect of web-design, we believe it's definitely worth the effort. Customers using the site will never associate the irritation of scrolling or screen locking or resizing when they view, meaning that while they may not be writing letters of praise for a pleasant user experience, they will certainly come away with a good impression of the site and the business behind it. In a competitive business market, the more you can do to have the edge of your competitors the better.

More and more people are viewing web content on mobile devices; 25% of people who registered for our client Heathrow Airports Ltd's volunteer scheme did so on a mobile. It's a huge section of the market that it's unwise to ignore, or fob off with a limited-functionality mobile version of your website.

We'll be looking more at responsive design and other developments in web building, including responsive emails, in an upcoming guide so watch this space. We'll also be able to tell you more about our top secret project so you can see responsive design in action.