Responsive web design helps provide a seamless user experience across various platforms, including laptops, PCs, tablets, or smartphones. A website is responsive if it can adapt to the screen size of the device.
In 2018, Google came out with mobile-first indexing, which means that your mobile site is more important to the search engine than your desktop site for indexing and ranking. Given the importance of mobile-friendly web design, here are five crucial elements to consider:
#1. Make information easier to find
According to a report, 91 percent of mobile users say that easy-to-find information is essential. That means if a website doesn’t give the results users are looking for, they’ll leave it. Here are some characteristics of a good website design:
- Navigation should be vertical and always visible
- Space between the navigational elements should be large enough to avoid misclicks
- Use top-aligned labels and fields
- Make use of collapsible menus and dropdown lists
- Make the submit button on your form visually appealing
- Show a progress bar on top of the form
#2 Use fluid grid
The grid plays a crucial role in making a website responsive. A mobile-friendly website uses a fluid grid to define structure, hierarchy, and rhythm in the design. The fluid grid ensures that the website design can adjust to a specific screen width based on percentages. A fluid layout offers a seamless viewing experience if a visitor moves from one device to another. It helps automatically adjust the font size of your text, the size of pictures, and images. For most websites, a fluid grid is usually the best option rather than going for fixed sizes.
#3 Compress your images and files
Just a one-second delay can lead to 11 percent fewer page views and a 7 percent loss in conversions. One in four visitors will abandon a site if it takes more than four seconds to load. Given the short attention span of mobile visitors, use performance techniques such as caching and responsive image display to help improve your web page loading speed. On a mobile website, it’s important to keep everything open and decluttered. Making your site responsive will get your site more shares, which will also boost your SEO.
#4 Make your button sizes large enough to work on mobile
Buttons are a fundamental component of a user-friendly website and need proper planning. Small buttons on a small smartphone screen can easily annoy the user if they are closely packed. Buttons are a middleman between the user and the product. Use more oversized buttons and be thoughtful about where on the screen you place them. Also, try to use shapes and styles of buttons we are all familiar with. That includes square buttons, rounded squares, or other button shapes.
#5 Include the viewport meta tag
The browser’s viewport is the area of the window in which you view the web content. The viewport meta tag makes a regular website page turn into a responsive page. Without a viewport meta tag, mobile devices will render pages at typical desktop screen widths and then scale them down, making it difficult to read. A viewport meta tag included in the head of your HTML document tells the browser how the page should be rendered.
About Smarter Web
We are a leading design & digital marketing agency that delivers impactful web experiences for our clients. Located in Pensacola, Florida, we build websites that are designed to captivate your audience and convert leads. We offer services like online advertising, SEM, web design, development & optimization, SEO, and content marketing.
To learn more about the services that we offer, call us at (844) 762-7890. You can also drop us an email at sales@smarterweb.net for any queries.
