Buyers: how important are responsive themes to you?

I’m mega curious to round up some buyers’ thoughts here. Being completely truthful.. how important is it to you that a theme you pick to purchase is responsive?

A. Absolutely essential, it needs to be or I won’t buy it
B. Just nice to have, but not important so I’ll buy it anyway
C. Don’t care

I will go with A because I monitor a lot of my client’s web traffic and a fair amount come from mobile devices. Making sure the user’s visit to your website is smooth and without problems is important and it goes beyond just simply being responsive in terms of design but needs to be responsive regarding coding as well.

I think “responsivness” isn’t an optional feature anymore. It’s like selling cars without power windows or customizable seats, or without integrated sound system.

It’s already standard. So if you decide to only create themes which aren’t responsive you will shortly experience a difference compared to your competitors.

Edit: Further I think it should be also set to a standard and shouldn’t be extra advertised anymore on the item description.

100% agree with infuse01.

Anyway, buyers don’t care much about this. Just take a look at the Top Files…

I agree with the above that one here it is becoming a standard. I would add though that this is partly because of the environment and purpose of TF.

We actually carried out a pretty in depth review of responsiveness for work and while many of the pro designers we asked said it was definitely a bonus as it means one build for all devices, but when you look into custom builds for brands etc then it is important to ask how many people will actually browse the whole site on a mobile and consider the importance of mobile simplicity and functionality i.e. creating a call to action or simplified process based on the likely action that a user will take. Thanks

It is understandable if older sites or themes haven’t been made responsive yet. For anything new created, it is essential.

charlie4282 said
I agree with the above that one here it is becoming a standard. I would add though that this is partly because of the environment and purpose of TF.

We actually carried out a pretty in depth review of responsiveness for work and while many of the pro designers we asked said it was definitely a bonus as it means one build for all devices, but when you look into custom builds for brands etc then it is important to ask how many people will actually browse the whole site on a mobile and consider the importance of mobile simplicity and functionality i.e. creating a call to action or simplified process based on the likely action that a user will take. Thanks

Absolutly agree with you. If we talk about responsiveness in general I would also say that it depends on the various needs of the specific project. As someone mentioned in another thread about a “responsive” Envato Network (http://themeforest.net/forums/thread/responsive-envato-responsive/72196) – it wouldn’t make too much sense to have a responsive layout for the marketplace websites. So from case to case there can be a custom solution which varies.

But for pre-made themes I guess the best is to go with that “buzz” which actually isn’t a buzz anymore.

Absolutely right Infuse – we surveyed around 150 designers and agencies from web, social and mobile etc teams because we have a conference coming up where we have to talk about exactly this; and perhaps even more about “mobile optimisation” rather than responsiveness but as you rightfully said when it comes to pre-made stuff it is an added feature.

Always really interesting to hear different peoples’ opinions. Thank you

B

I’d prefer IE5 support.