Ascertaining the Presence of Responsiveness in the Websites of Tertiary Institutions

Abstract

The use of the concept of responsiveness in designing websites aims at developing applications that respond to the behavior and background of users of the sites.  The design procedure involves the use of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) media queries.  This intelligently blends flexible grids with image layouts and appearances. A web page, when viewed in a specific device, (for example, a desktop computer) adjusts to retain its resolution features, image size and scripting abilities on another device (e.g., laptop or mobile device) without any intervention from the device user.  Product delivery delays are avoided in responsive approach because repetitions of the different phases of the design and development cycle for every new device are eliminated; thus saving on cost. This study, motivated by the significant benefits accruable from this new technology, investigated the websites of 515 tertiary institutions on the Internet with a view to determining if they were designed using the concept of responsiveness or not. Results show that only 55% of the 515 websites were designed with responsive technique, while 45% were not.  It is therefore recommended that other tertiary institutions should adopt responsive technology in the design of their websites in order to avail themselves of its benefits.