6 Sure-Fire Ways to Make Your Responsive Web Design Even Better

Turn back the clock two decades back and you will realize that we only have one device, which is the desktop computer. As time passed, new devices such as laptops, tablets, smartphones, and smartwatches started emerging. Within a short span, bulky desktops are replaced with portable laptops and portable laptops made way for smartphones and tablets. Today, we live in an era of wearable devices.

With so many devices out there, web developers must create a website that runs smoothly on every device. This is a daunting challenge, especially when you consider varying screen sizes, screen resolutions, device dimensions, and platforms. With tech giants like Google putting their weight behind responsive websites and more people accessing the web through their mobile devices, having a responsive website is not an option anymore.
In this article, Anti-Dos will highlight six proven ways that can help you improve your responsive web design.

1. Context is Key

Web designers treat desktop users as stationary and mobile users as roaming. That is why you will find transportation companies offering ticket buying facilities on desktops and directions on mobile devices. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Today, the focus has shifted to mobile and most companies now offer a mobile site or a dedicated mobile app for different audiences. Knowing user intent is crucial for success. For that, you will have to classify users based on their preferences and buyer personas. This allows you to deliver a more personalized user experience.

1. Start Small

Instead of starting with the largest device dimension and highest screen resolution, you should start from the smallest one and take it from there. This will allow you to identify media query breakpoints. Although there are no fixed rules on how big breakpoint steps should be, make sure that these steps don’t exceed the 200-pixel mark. Make sure to take smaller steps first, such as changing the font, adding a floating image, and then moving on to complex ones such as adding columns to your responsive website.

2. Refine Your Content

When you are designing a responsive website, you don’t have the same real estate that you would enjoy on a desktop-based website. With less room to play with, it is quite challenging to fit everything in a small space without looking too cluttered. Due to this, they can not use the large blocks of texts that they use on the desktop version of their website. This means that you will have to distill your content and only keep the necessary bits while eliminating the extras to make it fit on smaller screens.

Why does your target audience visit your website? What is more important to those users? How do they interact with your website and what is their typical journey? Professional web design companies design websites with all these considerations in mind. Once you answer these questions, you can easily decide on which content you should keep and which content you should remove from your responsive website. Make sure that your content fits perfectly on a mobile-based layout. Keep your web copy short and to the point so that users get the information they need without having to scroll through a lot of text.

3. Make Navigation Easy

An important element of a responsive website is navigation. Unfortunately, most responsive web designers tend to neglect it and businesses must bear the brunt of it. Responsive web designers should prioritize navigation when creating a responsive website. Consider the screen dimension and resolution when deciding on the navigation layout and placement of navigational buttons.

Due to lack of screen space, most responsive websites tend to hide navigation buttons behind hamburger menus. It might work great on smaller screens but is not an ideal choice for large screens. The easier it for your website visitors to browse through your website, the more time they will spend on it and the more they will explore your website. Make sure that navigation buttons are easy to find and prominently visible so that the users don’t have to figure out how to navigate your website.

4. Performance Does Matter

As responsive web design becomes common and its tools become easily available, the cost of creating a responsive website has also come down. This means that cost is no longer a problem, but performance is. Delivering a great user experience is much more challenging on devices with limited hardware capabilities, whether it is slower processors, poor network connectivity or smaller screens.

Consult your web designer and graphic designer to determine the most effective approach to use these techniques for your company.

Even a minor delay can ruin the user experience of your website even if it is for security purposes. Instead of using multi-factor authentication which adds extra steps to the login process, you should use a DDoS protected DNS. As a business, you want to deliver an optimal user experience and your users expect that from your website. Thankfully, you can easily achieve that goal by following these steps:

• Use fewer images
• Avoid custom fonts
• Keep it simple
• Reduce the number of steps
• Minimize the number of redirects
• Load above the fold first

All these steps go a long way in enhancing the user experience of your responsive website.

5. Never Make Compromises

Just because you are delivering your website to devices with limited resources does not mean that you should create a watered-down version of your website. Responsive web designers should look to add new mobile-specific features that are not present on their desktop sites. This includes geolocation and offline support.

Just because your responsive website will be opened on mobile devices does not mean that you should disable zoom functions. Never hide content just because you have limited screen real estate. Avoid skipping out on essential features and stop making compromises as it can have a negative impact on your website. This would kill the whole purpose of having a responsive website in the first place.

How do you make improvements to your responsive web designs? Let us know in the comments section below. We would love to hear your feedback in the comments section.