The Ultimate Guide to a Responsive Website
Most people are familiar with opening a website on a computer and having a wonderful user experience, but on a mobile device, the story is different. Pinching and zooming is the only way to view. That is an unresponsive website.
A responsive website will automatically adjust to accommodate different screen sizes and viewports. All content and graphics are resized to fit on a desktop, tablet, and phone screens.
Website visitors are harsh. In fact, 38% of visitors will leave your website if the content and layout are unattractive (think unresponsive).
For every two out of three minutes spent online, a mobile device is used. This shows the urgency of designing a responsive website across all devices to retain visitors.
Why It Is Almost Mandatory to Have a Responsive Website
A responsive website could boost your SEO performance. How? It signals to search engines that your website pages are optimized for all viewing experiences.
Back in 2015, Google announced that websites that were not user-friendly would lose their presence in search engines. Google is that serious about unresponsive websites.
Responsive websites load faster than standard mobile versions. Loading delays are not to be gambled with because impatient website visitors might leave and never come back.
It is time-consuming to maintain separate mobile and non-mobile sites. But if you are using a responsive website and want to make any changes, you will only do so on one site and it will update to the other websites as opposed to having different websites for different devices.
Users are also eager to share your website with others on social media if the experience was worth their time.
Your website is your business's digital face, let it create a good first impression on your visitors.
What to Consider When Creating a Responsive Website
1 – Set the Right Responsive Breakpoints
Breakpoints are points where a website's content and design adapt to provide the best user experience. The points are defined in code.
At the breakpoints, also called CSS breakpoints, content or images are not cut out, distorted, or obscured. The website's content responds to the CSS breakpoints and adjusts to the screen size.
You should set breakpoints for the most common device resolutions on desktop, tablet and mobile. Examples of breakpoints are:
320px – 480px for mobile devices.
481px – 768px for iPads and tablets.
769px – 1024px for small screens (laptops).
1025px – 1200px for large screens (desktops).
1201px and beyond for extra large screens (TVs).
2 – Use a Fluid Grid
A fluid grid is a way to manage space in a layout by breaking down a page's width into several equal columns. Content is then placed using the columns as a guide.
The column height and width dimensions are not fixed, they fluidly adjust to the screen size. Simple grids are made of up to three columns while complex grids have over 12 columns.
Creating a fluid grid from scratch is time-consuming. You might want to use an existing grid framework or use a grid generator. The majority of CSS grid frameworks have advanced features that have been tried on multiple browsers.
3 – Use Responsive Images
Images and videos are a way of engaging users more on your site, therefore, blocks of text without any visual stimulation are boring.
Your website images need to be responsive, meaning they should stretch or shrink according to the screen size.
When an image is uploaded to a website, its width and height are at default. Both can then be changed using CSS.
To make an image responsive will require you to give its width a new value, and the height will automatically adjust.
4 – Use Responsive Typography
A responsive website requires fonts that adjust to the screen size. There are four properties you need to get right: Font family, font size, line height, and text width.
When designing typography for multiple screens, consider the following:
Distance between a user's eyes and the screen. Users place their devices farther from their eyes when using larger screens. The font sizes should increase with increasing device width.
Consistent proportions between body text and other aspects. As the body text size increases, so should all the other elements increase in size.
Font size should increase at specific breakpoints. Some elements like H1 need to have their size increased so as to garner attention and draw the reader in.
5– Consider the Touchscreen Size
Touchscreen devices are challenging to designers due to their small size.
When using a desktop website, a cursor is precise when you point it somewhere, but on mobile devices, the touchscreens are small. You have to take into account that some people have really wide fingers.
Buttons should be big enough and they should not be located too close to each other such that users with wide fingers make an incorrect click.
Take into account also that, unlike a cursor, fingers can pinch, zoom or swipe up, down, left, and right. Consider such when creating a responsive website.
How Do You Test Whether a Website Is Responsive?
Use Google Chrome to open the site to test. Open its menu > Inspect > Toggle device toolbar.
Use the below checklist to find out whether your website is responsive in all aspects:
Check how fast the pages load on different devices.
Confirm whether all links are working.
Shrink and enlarge windows to see how far they can go.
All videos and images should be fully displayed.
Make sure scrolling up and down is smooth.
Every field that needs filling should be easy to fill.
There should be no horizontal scrolling to see all content.
Recap
Most searches are done on mobile devices, which means if your website is not user-friendly and appealing, people searching on Google will pass your website.
Your website needs to look good on a desktop, laptop, iPad, or smartphone. Remember, a responsive website will help you reach consumers across all devices if you give them a user-friendly experience.
It will also help you keep track of all website analytics using only one website for all devices. This will decrease the time wasted on managing multiple sites.
More traffic means more conversions and more sales. A big win for you if your website is responsive.