With the increasing use of smartphones and other devices, you need a site that functions and shows well
on a wide variety of screens and browsers. Choosing a responsive web design is an excellent way to
achieve
this goal. It will also help you make a solid digital presence on the web.
But creating a responsive design for a site takes plenty of skills. It is not just about fitting the
content to a small window but about providing a robust user experience to an increasing number of
web-based devices.
Responsive Web Design Tips and Tricks 2021
Here we will show you the best responsive design tips that will help you in building a responsive and
alluring site:
Do’s
When creating RWD for your site, do follow the tips below:
1. Keep Your Design Fast-Loading and Light
Page speed is one of the main ranking factors on search engines. So, always keep your responsive web
design as light as possible so that it can load fast.
Did you know 1 in 4 visitors would leave your site if it takes more than 4
seconds
to load? Usually, the perfect webpage loading speed should be less than 1.5 seconds.
2. Do Keep UX in Mind
Keep your user experience in mind while building a responsive site. Use analytics software (paid or
free)
to find out what your users are trying to accomplish, what devices they are using, which pages they
engage
with the most, etc. It will help you to determine if they would use the features that you desire to
display.
3. Design with Fluid Grid
A fluid grid is how RWD should work. It allows users to build responsive web designs suitable for
dynamic
screen sizes effectively. They can even adjust it as per your design to offer the best experience to the
user.
4. Create Designs for Each Device Individually
Create a design for every device individually because each one of them has its own features. So, make
sure you are familiar with each device that you want to design for.
5. Test, Track and Improve Your Design
Before making your site live, testing your third-party coding, themes, and plugins is highly advised
throughout the responsive web design process. Using Google’s
Mobile-Friendly Test tool would help.
6. Adhere to the Design Conventions
Follow certain design conventions whenever possible. For example, Google has its own UI design
convention
known as Material
Design. It is a standard for building and designing apps and websites. It is essential to
determine
how individuals are interacting with your website and then optimize wherever
required.
7. Optimize Your Plugins
If you have a WordPress site, optimize your plugins to ensure your site functions smoothly and enhance
both front-end and back-end processes.
AMP plugin allows the web page to replace non-responsive themes with responsive ones quickly. On the
other
hand, the WP touch plugin will ensure your site change themes seamlessly so that they are
mobile-friendly.
8. Use All Things that a Mobile Can Do
Best responsive sites use things that a mobile can do. For example, your site should initiate a phone
call when the user clicks the “call now” button. So, think "out of the box" and then bring out exciting
features that your customers love to use on a mobile website. You can create fluid layouts and find out
which device your consumers use to aces your website.
Don’ts
Avoid the following practices while creating a responsive site for your business:
1. Adding Too Big Videos and Images
Avoid adding pictures, GIFs, and videos of large size because it will annoy the mobile visitors. Also,
large files take too much time to load and download. So, take out some time to compress large files
before
uploading them. Once you accomplish site scalability for mobile use, focus on adjusting your pictures.
2. Untidy Page Layout
For smooth navigation, it is essential to keep the layout of your site as clean as possible. Use clear
pictures, readable fonts, and easy page organization to offer a great user experience. Make sure, font
size you have selected must not be smaller than 16 pixels. Avoid cluttering the page with too much
content. It will prevent the user from getting overwhelmed. Just keep your message focused on the most
important data with C2A’s visible and clear.
3. Hiding Content for Mobile
Rather than hiding some of your content, follow a mobile-first design policy. It means you should focus
on designing a full-featured responsive site for mobile-first and then scale it for laptops, desktop
devices, and tablets. It will help you make your content accessible for every person.
4. Using Small and Untappable Links
Tap clicks on mobile are not as accurate as mouse clicks. Thus, design the web page with mobile users
in
mind by making clickable elements big enough for every device. It will help the visitors easily click on
them when browsing with a mobile.
If you have fat fingers, your navigation links and buttons must have a minimum of 15 pixels of margin
around them and 8 pixels padding. Always keep your body size of a minimum of 16 pixels and line height
of
a minimum of 1.4.
5. Adding PDF on a Landing Page
Avoid using PDFs on landing pages because they are not mobile-friendly. They are not unreadable on
medium-sized screens, do not offer any SEO benefits, and create a poor user experience.
Wrapping Up:
Rather than building multiple sites for diverse screen sizes, now you can design just a single site
that
scales down and up automatically to match the device it’s being seen on. This is possible by selecting a
responsive website design.
It can help you solve many issues related to your website. It also helps you make your website
mobile-friendly, increase the visitors spending time, and boost search engine ranking.
If your site fails to meet responsive web design standards, visitors will move on to your competition.
If
you find building a responsive design tough, partner with Netwired
and explain all your professional
design needs with our experts.