With an ever expanding number of device types and sizes, it is becoming more and more vital that your website is ready to adapt regardless of who is looking at it and how. This is achieved through Responsive Website Design (RSD) and is now at the forefront of all website design and development. RSD is the process of making sure the website looks stunning, and is fully usable regardless of if the user is on a mobile, tablet, laptop or desktop device. We will dive deeper into this process, discuss why it matters and how you can go about achieving this in your website builds.
So What Exactly IS Responsive Web Design?
At its core, responsive website design is ensuring that the website is functional and easy to use for users on all screen sizes and devices. With how busy people are in today’s world, there is no guarantee that people will only be using your website on a desktop or laptop. This means you need to work through the website and make sure all pages are fully responsive on tablets and mobile devices too.
To achieve this, you want to be looking at three key areas:
- Fluid Grids: The use of a Fluid Grid makes it super simple to adapt to other devices as all of your sizes are done based on percentages rather than specific sizes. For example if you want something to be full width, on your desktop, you would set the size to 100% rather than 1920px. That way, when you load the website on a smaller device, you can ensure the section will shrink to be 100% of the smaller screen rather than some of the content disappearing off the screen.
- Flexible Images: These are very similar to Fluid Grids and work in tandem. These images will scale with the fluid grids making sure they shrink the height and width at the same time as the container. This maintains the aspect ratio of the image while ensuring it’s all still visible on screen.
- Media Queries: The use of media queries allows you to apply different styling for specific screen sizes. This allows you to be more flexible in your designs and can help make sure a site works better for each device. You can use them to load blocks in different orders, that work to display the information better on a relative screen size or look to format some things differently.
Why Responsive Web Design Matters
There are a number of reasons why making a responsive design is important. IT can have benefits to the end user experience (UX), Improved google rankings and SEO benefits as well as being more cost effective for your business in the long run.
Improved User Experience
RSD enables the end user to look at the information, products or services on any device they like at any time that works for them. In the ever busy world we live in, it is unlikely that people will only look at your website while sitting at a computer screen. More and more people are browsing the internet on phones while walking, using public transport or just at home but away from a desk.
You may even find that one person looks at your website on multiple devices as they start researching while on the move, but then don’t commit to purchasing/enquiring until they are at home later in the day. This means it’s integral that your site both responds, and remains consistent across all platforms to re-assure any potential customers that they are in the correct place and still looking at the same company.
Constantly Increasing Mobile Usage
In a 2023 study, it was found that 86% of people use their mobile phones to go online. This has skyrocketed from 2009 where it was a much lower 28%. This is a trend that is only expected to continue and grow more and more as time goes on, as it is expected that by 2025, 95% of the UK population will be smartphone users. As this continues to grow, by rejecting Responsive Website Design, you will be alienating more and more of your potential customers and losing out on potential business opportunities.
SEO Benefit
Due to the ever increasing mobile market and the impact that non-responsive websites can have on the user experience, Google and other search engines started pushing for websites to be responsive back in 2012. The industry has seen many updates to different search engine algorithms that have negatively impacted websites which can’t respond, forcing them down the search rankings and leading to them getting less and less traffic.
Cost Effective
Back when people first started to use mobile phones to browse the internet, a quick solution that started to be implemented was to have two versions of your website running at any given time. One of the sites would be built for a desktop audience and one would be tailored just to a mobile audience. While this is a solution that could work technically, it is by no means as effective financially. This method would require you to effectively host two versions of your website, doubling your ongoing costs. If instead you opt for a responsive website, you can create a website that meets both needs without ballooning your maintenance and upkeep costs.
Common Tools and Techniques for Implementing RWD
In order to create and fully implement responsive website design for your websites, you need to look at using several different tools and frameworks. These include:
- CSS Frameworks: CSS frameworks are great for helping you style your website. They not only allow for you to control how the website looks by efficiently controlling colours, text sizes and other graphic elements, it also allows you to use media queries to adapt these styles for specific screen sizes.
- Responsive Testing Tools: These tools are designed by a wide range of companies and are there to simulate your website on a wide range of device types and will highlight if there are any issues or errors which stop the website from being considered as fully responsive. This not only helps with troubleshooting, but also ensures that the website is up to the latest Google standards from an SEO perspective.
- Responsive Web Design Best Practices: When you look to design your new site, make sure to factor in the industry wide best practices such as mobile first design. Making sure you design for the smallest screen sizes first and scaling up means you can be sure that all your elements fit to the page when you have the least space to work with.
Examples of Good Responsive Web Design
If you are looking for some good examples of real world Responsive Website Design, take a look through our website portfolio. You can see a range of different website designs and styles that all respond down to work on different device sizes and platforms. Looking at other websites is a great way to get ideas of how your blocks can respond to different screen sizes.
Conclusion
In a world where users access the internet from a variety of devices, responsive web design is no longer optional but a minimum requirement. By implementing responsive design practices, you give yourself the best possible chance of improving your users experience and providing the best online first impression possible.
Need help with responsive design for your website? Why not talk to one of our team who is always on hand to help.
