Conflict in design on a responsive website.

[Rob72]

I have a website which I am converting to a responsive design. I have a group of pages which give the formulas for calculating the amount of concrete you need for a patio of different shapes. I also offer a download – a spreadsheet which provides the ability for someone with spreadsheet software such as Excel to automatically calculate the amount of concrete they need to purchase for any size patio or sonatube.

As it is a spreadsheet download, it wouldn’t be something that could be downloaded to a smartphone, possibly some tablets.

The question is, should I leave the download link in for smartphones and tablets, even though it can’t be used or just configure the CSS so that the link only appears on desktops?

[Alen]

Leave the link in…

But more importantly, why are you giving them Excel sheet to download? Wouldn’t it be more practical to have few input fields that do the calculation automagically.

Instead of:

• click to download,
• open in Excel,
• enter amounts,
• get the result

You can just:

• enter amount(s)
• get the result

IMO, much better user experience.

[Author]

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