One of Google’s goals is to supply a better user experience for all of the users searching on their mobile devices. Consider the last time you accessed a site on your phone and tried to click on a button to navigate but hit the incorrect one. Then you had to hit the rear button and concentrate just to undertake to click the right link, only to miss again and hit the one next thereto. Super frustrating, right?
Thus, a couple of years ago, Google unrolled changes that altered search results on smartphones and tablets in an effort to vary the simplest practices for web design to incorporate mobile display and usefulness . In response, many businesses designed their website to be responsive — the power to be viewed on different size tablets and mobile phones.
Here Website Development Company Melbourne breaks down the fundamentals of responsive design and offers some proven best practices.
What does content need to do with website design?
When potential clients visit your website, they’re not trying to find a reasonable banner or great graphics; they’re trying to find the content you've got to supply.
Make sure all of your valuable content is straightforward to seek out, even when screen land is restricted. Do that by ensuring that the header of the content and therefore the content itself are visible on mobile devices without the necessity to scroll. (You have some leeway on larger screens, but don’t abuse it).
Remember what the user is basically to seek out searching for trying to find — strong content that helps them get their jobs done that’s easy to find and even as easy to navigate.
The backbone of responsive design is that the ability to shift and format content counting on the dimensions of the screen. In technical terms, this is often referred to as “the media query.”
This terminology evolved from the term “media type,” which may be a sheet that determines how a bit of content is presented on different physical media, like a screen, paper, or Braille device.
Media queries work similarly. However, rather than detecting the sort of physical media, a media query detects the dimensions of a screen. the web site then decides to render a selected sheet for that specific screen size.
When considering an internet site redesign, confine mind that you simply don’t want to limit your website to only three sizes — desktop, tablet, and mobile. Instead, you’ll want your site to scale appropriately for screens of all sizes, regardless of their dimensions. That’s what a media query accomplishes.
When designing a responsive website, start with mobile styles as your foundation and add additional columns and designs with media queries. This way, if someone lands on your site employing a device or browser that doesn't support media queries, they're going to be ready to see the mobile version of your site.
This is considered best practice for a few reasons.
“Mobile first” design helps you specialize in what really matters and accounts for limited screen land and limited attention spans. Maybe that random image of a truck on a highway isn’t really necessary in any case.
“Mobile first” design helps broaden your reach to devices that don’t support media queries.
Learn how Corrugated Metals increased leads by 285% after updating to a responsive website
Navigation is one among the foremost important assets of an internet site. Unfortunately, it’s also one that the majority of “responsive websites” get wrong. Don’t fall under this trap!
You don’t want your navigation menu to urge within the way of important content, but you furthermore may want to make sure your visitors can navigate easily regardless of what device they're using. So, you would like to strike a balance by making your site’s navigation as intuitive as possible without making it obstructive.
We cannot emphasize enough the importance of ensuring all of your content — images, videos, PDFs, etc. — are fully optimized for all screens and devices. Having large assets that take an excessive amount of time to load is perhaps the number-one reason visitors bounce from a site.
With people browsing more and more frequently on mobile devices, they're sacrificing the accuracy of a mouse or stylus for the convenience of using their fingers.
Therefore, every interactive element of your site — links, buttons, CTAs, etc. — must be “touch-friendly.” Use the correct size for the peak of your buttons. We recommend a minimum of 10mm. Your targets that are large enough and fluid enough make browsing your site as seamless and straightforward as possible.