: Mobile site or responsive design for a webshop? We need to make our webshop a mobile phone friendly layout for customers. I know there are two options we have, one is to make a mobile site,

@Courtney195

There are pro's and con's to both:

The m.example.com version is easier to build, you can use less CSS, and templates and JavaScript just for mobiles. It creates a more lightweight system.

This also allows for a [switch to desktop mode] button.
The con is when to redirect the site. Some users always want to see the desktop version, and just zoom (though this is a con for responsive as well).

Another con is HOW to redirect. Are you going to wait for JavaScript to detect width? Or use some library to check the USER_AGENT string, which is outdated the moment you use it...

Last major con I can think of is maintenance. If you implement some new feature in your template, you'll need to do the same thing for the mobile version.

You could choose to make the mobile version a little responsive for small/larger smartphones up to phablet/tablet. This would be the better method, but it takes a whole lot more time to build and maintain.

The responsive version is more complicated to make the first time. You might need to rebuild parts of your HTML to be a better for for various modes and the CSS/JS will need to work for both desktops and mobile devices.

The pro is that you don't need to update everything twice, and it's easier to maintain. This method in my experience is easier to control the UX for.

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@Berryessa370

The first thing is to decide who is your target audience - Desktop users, mobile users or both.

After deciding it if you want to target both desktop and mobile users than responsive website is the right solution.

and if you are targeting mobile users only than mobile site can serve your purpose but still what i prefer as per latest trend is to target mobile users it is better to have mobile app which can provide better user experience for ecommerce webshops.

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