While the need to offer the best possible experience of your site over a variety of devices is clear, how can you actually make this happen – on a budget? The answer lies in responsive web design.
Now this is often thought of as designing a website that just ‘responds’ to the dimensions of the screen its on so that you get a better experience.
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How responsive web design improves experience
Responsive web design tools
Revamp your website for the touchable world
In reality, responsive design is a whole new way of designing websites – from the technical nitty gritty round the back right through to the philosophy of what you put on the front.
And it means that you have to start thinking in terms of redesigning your whole web-presence. Now of course this is a huge undertaking – but can you afford not to?
In 2013, fewer PCs were sold than in 2012 and tablet penetration is growing exponentially. And tablet shoppers are higher spenders and much more likely to convert than any other online shopper. So now may well be the time to make that leap and make that investment.
If you do then here are some things you need to bear in mind if you want to go down the responsive web design route.
Do you need to go mobile
While you will be seeing increasing mobile traffic to your site, you do have to ask yourself if an upgrade is going to be worth it at this stage, so before embarking on any of the below, take a look at your stats – especially how many people come to your via mobile and if they are abandoning or not through that channel.
Ditching a PC-only approach is inevitable, but it maybe something you have the luxury of time to save up for.
What are your business objectives on mobile?
Once you have ascertained the veracity of going mobile – tablet and smartphone – you need to carefully assess what you need your website to do, as this will then impact how you look at implementing a responsive design strategy.
If you are looking to maximize sales through all channels, then look at how to optimize the imagery, navigation, calls to action and checkout to facilitate this across devices. If you want mobile to be more of a search tool or show-rooming tool, then design accordingly.
Optimize the layout of your content
Responsive design can show what you want on the screen depending on device, but you have to know what you want to appear and where, so you really need to think carefully about how users are going to use your mobile site on a phone and on a tablet, as well as how they are going to use the site on a PC.
If a user is browsing your site from a phone, they generally don’t have a lot of screen to work with. Phones today will typically zoom out automatically, so that the entire website can be seen onscreen.
This can be good, as it gives the reader access to the entire sight, but it can also be frustrating when trying to find information that is located in a tiny part of the upper right of the screen.
If you could move some things around, make some things bigger, and not have as many columns, you’ll give your mobile reader a much better experience.
Adapt the content that’s shown.
Different devices are going to be used in very different ways by different users, so think about what content is going to appear and where on different devices based on likely usage.
A restaurant for instance may want to have beautiful shots of its food on its website, but when it comes to mobile it is more likely that the user is going to want to know what food it serves, where it is, what reviews it has and how to book a table.
While responsive design takes care of this as it happens a lot of thought has to go into what content the responsive design is going to throw up at the user.
Use the latest coding
With so many new mobile devices being released every year, the days of checking your site in a few web browsers and launching are over.
You’ll need to optimize your site for a vast landscape of desktop and mobile browsers, each bringing a different screen resolution, supported technologies, and user-base.
Using the latest and most forward-thinking web technologies like HTML5, CSS3, and web fonts, you can design your site to scale and adapt to any device it’s viewed on. That’s really the essence of what makes responsive web design tick.
Some website service tools such as WordPress also offer designs that offer some degree of responsiveness, so if you are starting from scratch and are on a budget make sure you pick a design from your webhost that is adaptable to different devices – remember mobiles, unlike PCs, can be viewed landscape and portrait.
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