Pull up the analytics on most Devon small business sites and you will see the same pattern: 60–70% of visits come from a phone, 5–10% from a tablet, and the rest from a desktop or laptop. If your website looks brilliant on the big screen we built it on but breaks down on a phone, you have built a website for a small fraction of your audience and left the majority looking at a clumsy, half-working site.
Responsive design — building a single site that adapts cleanly to every screen size — has been the standard for over a decade. Divi 5 finally makes it genuinely easy to do well. Here is what that means in practice for a Newton Abbot, Teignmouth or Exeter business.
What "responsive" actually means
A responsive site uses one set of HTML, CSS and content, and reshapes itself based on the visitor's screen width. Columns stack vertically on a phone. Text resizes. Images scale. Navigation collapses into a tap-to-open menu. Buttons grow to the size of a thumb.
We are ready to talk things through!
Contact HereWhat it does not mean is "a separate mobile site". Those went out around 2015 and were a nightmare to maintain — duplicate content, two URLs to update, two SEO profiles to fight for. Modern responsive design is one site, every device.
Why it matters for the bottom line
SEO. Google has used mobile-first indexing since 2019. The version of your site Google ranks is the mobile version. If that is broken or slow, your rankings are broken too.
Conversions. A visitor who has to pinch and zoom to read your phone number, or who taps a button and accidentally hits the one next to it, is gone. The bounce rates we see on non-responsive sites are roughly double those on properly responsive ones.
Trust. A site that does not work properly on a phone signals to a customer that the business is either out of date, badly run, or both. The unconscious damage to the brand is significant.
Cost. One responsive site is materially cheaper to build, host and update than a separate mobile version. We do not maintain two of anything for our clients.
What Divi 5 brings to the table
Divi has been responsive-capable for years, but the rebuilt Divi 5 treats responsive editing as a first-class concern rather than an afterthought.
Per-breakpoint editing. Every module — heading, image, button, form — exposes phone, tablet and desktop settings. You can use a smaller heading on phones, hide a decorative image on tablets, or change column order entirely between layouts. We do this routinely on holiday-let and restaurant sites where the mobile booking CTA needs to be the very first thing the visitor sees.
Real device preview. Divi 5 renders the page as it will actually appear on common phone, tablet and laptop sizes. We test against an iPhone 14, a Pixel 7, an iPad mini and a 15-inch laptop on every site we build, but the in-builder preview catches most issues earlier.
Mobile-first defaults. Spacing, button sizing and font scaling default to mobile-friendly values. Text and tap targets are legible without intervention. We still tune them by hand, but the starting point is sound.
How we test responsive at handover
Before a Devon client signs off a build we run a documented checklist on real devices: navigation works, all CTAs are reachable, forms send, click-to-call links open the dialler, click-to-WhatsApp opens WhatsApp, photo galleries swipe smoothly, video plays, the cookie banner does not obscure the booking button. We document any deliberate desktop-only or mobile-only behaviour in writing.
Audit your current site this week
A quick test: open your website on your own phone in a coffee shop in Newton Abbot or Exeter — somewhere with patchy mobile signal. If it loads slowly, looks awkward or makes you scroll horizontally, your customers are seeing the same. Send the URL to 07887 988780 and we will run a free responsive and speed audit. Starter rebuilds begin at £250.