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For your website to look interesting and provide enhanced user experience.
You need to have a well-designed page that would appeal to the taste of your target audience. This can be accomplished when you design a responsive website. However, creating responsive web design is easier said than done.
Why has responsive website design become a necessity?
The basic underlying principle is that the website should render uniformly across devices, form factors, and operating systems. In the earlier days, a website was designed to cater to the traditional desktop or laptop. However, the massive proliferation of mobile devices and internet browsing through smartphones has changed this concept on its head. Irrespective of the screen size or type of smart device, the user now wants to have a seamless experience when browsing webpages.
Today we look at essential principles of responsive web design that will help you develop an appealing layout and consistent browsing experience across devices.
1. Have the Right Flow
If you have been used to designing with the help of pixels and points, this may be a little difficult to use. The thing about creating responsive website design is that if not done properly, it will leave users with a bad experience. It is a known fact that the smaller the screens, the more the content moves into a vertical space thus constantly pushing things that are placed below, even further down. The concept of designing a proper flow isn’t easy to master. However, as you get the hang of it, it starts to make more sense.
2. Know Your Options
You have two options when creating responsive web design – choosing responsive or adaptive web design. Although these two approaches seem like the same thing, they aren’t really the same. It is said that both the approaches complement one another and thus neither is the wrong option. Instead, you should check out the content to decide which of the two approaches you should choose from.
3. Bitmap Images Versus Vectors
If you are choosing to go with bitmaps for your icons, you need to use JPG, PNG or Gif. On the other hand, if you decide to use Vectors, SVG or an icon font are considered to be the best options. All pictures need to be optimized so you need to see which format works better for you. While vectors are tiny they are heavier than bitmap so sometimes people opt against them.
4. Have Max/Min Values
Content being stretched across the screen of a mobile is perfectly acceptable, but if the same happens on your laptop, this would just not do. Hence, setting maximum and minimum values will help keep a check on these things, to some extent. For instance, if you set up the width of your site to be 100% but at the same time, put the maximum limit at 1000px, your content may fill up a small screen but will not exceed 1000px.
5. Use Breakpoints Cautiously
Breakpoints refer to predesigned points that are placed on a webpage that causes the layout to change. If you use a CSS property, it can easily be changed from one breakpoint to another. However, when using breakpoints, you should do so on the basis of the content. You should always make sure you are careful when you use them. Using them at the end of a sentence is perfectly fine however when you aren’t completely well-versed with the system, the page could turn into a disaster if not used wisely.
6. Begin with a Mobile
Although this is a factor that doesn’t make much of a difference when creating responsive web design, developers are advised to start off with mobiles as being smaller, they introduce you to a range of limitations that could surface. However, you can choose as you like.
7. Use System Fonts
Using web fonts is not smart because each of them needs to be downloaded and this causes the page to take much longer to load. However, system fonts tend to take a much shorter period of time to load, thereby making them a better option. If a user doesn’t have system fonts locally, it will automatically use a default font.
8. Flexible Units
Since websites can be accessed from different sized devices, you need to make sure your responsive website design
has units that are flexible and easy to use anywhere. It is in such instances that relative units come in handy. For instance, when you design something to be 50 per cent wide, no matter how big or small your screen is, it will always take up only half the screen. Thus having flexible units makes website designing much simpler.
9. Nested Objects
Refrain from cluttering your website with a lot of different elements. Instead, keep them well-structured, clean and tidy. Use static units like pixels to give some degree of order to your content. Pixels are particularly useful for content like buttons and logos, which you don’t want to scale.
So by using these basic principles, you will be on the right path to design responsive websites that will help you show your brand value in the right perspective. If you are looking to design a responsive website to boost your business and get access to a larger audience on the mobile, MobiSoft Infotech, the specialist in website development, has the right solution. Contact us today for getting customized websites designed for your business.
