" Responsive web design" we can roughly translate this term into a "responsive website design". It is a way of developing a website so that its interface and its content adapt to different consultation devices: computer screen, smartphone, or tablet.
Responsive Design: essential good practices
Responsive design, this theme has been at the center of web design for a few years, and yet it is still a priority when creating or redesigning a website. In this article, we quickly come back to what responsive design is, why it is still so important before presenting you with some tips not to be missed for your site. A web design company in Pakistan is serves you with better responsive design.
This is to use Media Queries so that the CSS code differs depending on the width of the screen that displays the website. The different content blocks will be organized differently according to the screen resolution, for example, favoring verticality in a mobile consultation.
These development techniques have replaced the old practice of creating two different versions of a site: one for mobile and one for computers (with an m.sitename subdomain, for example).
Why is the responsive design still a priority in 2020?
If you are comfortable with the web world, what has been said so far is probably just a reminder for you. But you may be wondering: why, ten years after the advent of responsive design, is its optimization still so important?
It's quite simple; the objective of a good website must be to guarantee the best experience for the user; this increases the chances of reaching your goal (lead generation, sales, etc.).
It has been a few years that Internet users migrate more and more from the computer to the smartphone, and we see no reason for this trend to be reversed! Internet users should therefore feel just as comfortable when viewing your site on their mobile, tablet, or computer.
Your users will not consciously notice that your site is optimized. On the other hand, you can be sure that they will see how impractical your site is if they have to scroll horizontally to read the content of your site!
Five modern tips for a good, responsive site
It makes sense for a website owner to adapt their site to demand, if only so as not to be left behind by the competition. Chances are, the leaders in your industry are actively optimizing their place, both to increase traffic and conversions.
Here are five tips to put in place to have a responsive site and in the era of time:
PRIORITIZE INFORMATION
The first thing to do when planning the organization of blocks on a responsive website is to prioritize the information to display depending on which ones add the most value to your users, which ones get them closer to conversion, etc.
For example, you should pay special attention to your Call-To-Action: the main CTAs should be displayed above the waterline for all the most popular screen resolutions.
A responsive display for a small screen should display as much information as on a large screen. But that does not mean that everything must be repeated in the same order, by arranging the blocks vertically rather than horizontally. Information placed as a sidebar at the top of the page on the desktop can be more relevant, for example, in a slider at the bottom of the page on mobile
USE SVG FORMAT
A tip well known to our graphic designers and front-end developers: use SVG format whenever possible for your visuals. This format isn't new, far from it, but it's not uncommon to see sites that forget to use it.
SVG stands for “Scalable Vector Graphics”, which means that the image can be resized at will, and therefore enlarged to infinity without causing loss of quality. This format is, therefore, ideal for a responsive design site.
responsive website SVG image
Why did we specify to use it “as soon as possible”? Because this format is only available for images entirely generated by computer: icons, logos, and synthetic images. Please don't panic, for the photos; we have another tip!
RESPONSIVE IMAGES TOO
To optimize the other images and photos on your responsive site, you can generate different formats called in the code, depending on the resolution of the screen reading the page.
To do this, all you have to do is use the srcset attribute and enter the various image formats that can be called. Take advantage, some CMS like WordPress, for example, will automatically generate three image formats, but you can manually create as many versions as you deem necessary.
image resizing in responsive design
This simple optimization has two uses to improve the UX on your site :
It prevents your images from being cut off and losing meaning
It reduces loading time on mobile by uploading a smaller image.
MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS CLICKABLE
A user browsing on mobile cannot be as precise with their fingers as with a mouse. For this reason, a page displayed on mobile should not be a simple reorganization of the page on the computer. Interactive elements should be proportionately larger for ease of navigation.
The buttons must therefore be of a certain size so that users can instinctively trigger them with their finger (conventionally, we recommend at least 48 pixels), but this also applies to form fields, etc.
It is not necessarily obvious and aesthetic to increase the size of a text link in a paragraph. One way to get around the problem is to increase the clickable area around the connection slightly with a little CSS.
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PHONE FEATURES
Finally, just like a mobile application or a Progressive Web App, a website displayed on mobile must take advantage of the many features of the device.
When possible, add links to your items to activate geolocation, the camera, or even open the phone application.
website using smartphone functions
We talked about PWAs: they are developing differently, but they are the logical evolution of responsive sites to always go further in the mobile-first approach! Progressive Web Apps have many advantages, such as offline loading, but this is a large topic that we will keep for a future blog post.