Tips for Creating Responsive Web Design

Thanks to the wide availability of mobile broadband, like 4G and 5G, mobile users can now use the internet while away from home. In fact, mobile devices have surpassed desktop to become the most popular device to use the Internet. This means a major chunk of traffic on your website is coming from mobile devices. So, this leads to our major concern, is our website friendly for mobile users?

To create the best user experience for mobile users, the most important thing is to ensure that your website is responsive to different mobile device sizes. This is why responsive web designing has become a standard. If your website is not mobile friendly, it will have difficulty ranking on top of Google.

Here are some tips to help you design the best responsive web design.

Navigation is Important

Mobile internet users have a really different behavior than desktop users, which is mainly because the navigation on mobile is totally different from that on the desktop. You cannot provide a horizontal navigation bar on a mobile-friendly website. It won’t fit the screen and users will hard time to tap on the link.

Tip: Hide your navigation bar behind a navigation icon, usually hamburger icon. This way you can save the space for your content and make it easier for users to navigate through your website.

Need for Speed

Since the mobile internet is not always as fast as the desktop, a website that loads in under 2 seconds on the desktop might load in more than 5 seconds on a mobile. A lot of factors contribute to this issue, mainly the size of images and videos.

Tip: For mobile internet users, it is best to optimize the speed for their best experience. For this, you can minimize the size of your images, avoid using high-resolution images and try to use embedded Youtube videos or WebM format videos instead.

Less is More

Since on mobile devices, you have limited space, you need to make use of that space wisely. You can either fill it with useless graphics or animation or show your most important content. Cluttering your website with useless details even on a desktop screen distracts a user from most important content and actions, resulting in loss of conversion. This principle applies to mobile as well.

Tip: Stick to the minimalistic approach. Maintain the ratio of white space. Only show the most important details, like content, CTA, and necessary images. Think about what are the most important elements for getting leads or making sales.

These tips are by no mean a complete guide to creating a responsive web design. To improve UX for mobile users, experiment what works best for your business.