Mobile phones and devices such as tablets have become a life line for us. From banking and financial transactions to searching for restaurants mobiles are the go to device. Within a click or two, we have found what we were looking for, right?
When searching online, did you ever find it difficult to see the information correctly on your device? The answer is probably no. You may have had devices with different screen sizes but they all display your information in a completely seamless manner.
Ever wonder how business websites appear without distortion in devices with different screen sizes? The award goes to Responsive web design technology!
So what exactly is responsive technology?
Responsive Web Design Technology
Responsive web design technology is a method to create websites so that it adjusts smoothly to various screen sizes. It encompasses different aspects of website designing and allows content to be displayed without loss of information or aesthetics.
Why is Responsive Web Design Technology important?
According to statistics, more than 4 billion people in the world use mobile devices to access the internet. That means, businesses have to adapt to responsive websites to gain advantage and remain competitive. As a business you cannot serve your potential customers with pages designed for the desktop computers only. You should not expect a user to make adjustments when navigating through your business website. Chances are, they will leave and never come back.
This would ultimately lead to lesser traffic to your website and therefore, a lower conversion rate. Unless you are able to generate sales and make profits from your website, you might as well not have one.
Or, you can design website that is optimized for mobiles and is easy to use and leverages a positive user experience. You will not be able to create websites that will deliver a hundred percent results without using responsive web design technology,
So how do you design a website that is responsive?
Designing a Responsive Website
As you may have already guessed by now, the principles for designing a responsive website starts and often ends with a strong focus on “mobiles”. Whenever a responsive website is to be designed, start by keeping in mind the experience on mobile platforms first and larger screens next. A good web design would display well for both small and large screens.
The other important aspect to keep in mind when designing a responsive website is the simplicity of the design itself. Most mobile devices have a much less screen space (or screen real estate) as compared to a desktop and therefore, complex components like scroll bars become quite hard to operate on touchscreen devices. Thus, remember to keep your web design simple and smart.
And, last but not the least, the third principle to remember when designing a responsive website is speed. Your website must load fully on any device in less than 2 seconds. Users do not like to be kept waiting and slow loading websites show a sharp drop in visitors. Much of the speed of your website depends on the web design and components you choose to place on a page like graphics, etc.
A well-designed website is a powerful digital front for your business and a responsive website draws traffic which helps to reap maximum benefits from SEO practices deployed for the website. And for that alone, your website has to be attractive, adaptable to various screen sizes with a simple design that loads within 5 seconds or less.
Here are some of the technological elements to remember when designing a responsive website.
CSS and HTML
CSS and HTML are the basic web design building blocks. You would not be able to design a responsive website without CSS and HTML, languages that control the layout and content of a web page in a browser. HTML offers properties or attributes for an element that can be controlled by CSS to create a dynamic web design.
Media Queries
Media query allows you to adapt the content according to the screen size or resolution and works akin to the “if-then-else” command in programming languages. You can use the media query to check for the screen size before executing the CSS code. You can use media queries to segregate on the sections of the web design code to execute.
Fluid Layout
A term that you will most come across when designing responsive websites is “fluid”. You now can no longer keep a static value for HTML elements in your web design, instead they have to be flexible or fluid to adjust to a percentage of the container size. Again, many designers prefer to use Flexbox, a CSS module, to layout multiple elements whose sizes are not known. A Flexbox or flex container can expand or shrink items according to the screen space available and is a very useful component for responsive web design.
Images
Graphics plays a key role in web design and makes web pages appealing and attractive. Images must be dynamic and should be able to change according to the screen space. CSS provides the Object-Fit Property of images which allows you to have more control over them.
Conclusion
There is another design methodology available for designing responsive websites widely known as adaptive technology. While responsive web design technology goes with a single layout that adjusts the content and elements according to the screen space, adaptive technology keeps different layouts for separate screens. Due to its ease of maintenance and use, responsive technology is the preferred choice for a lot of the web designers.
New advancements in technology emerge all the time that influence user experience and change the way businesses work. Responsive web design must take into consideration all the factors related to mobile devices and not simply concentrate on screen sizes. Remember that in order for you to start with digital marketing for your business, you need to first build a first class responsive website.
