The days of creating a responsive website design for a single desktop screen are long gone. The advancement of technology and the proliferation of mobile websites are forcing web designers to reconsider how their work is displayed across multiple devices.
It is elaborated that the best responsive websites professionally use fluid grids, flexible images, and CSS styling to change the design of the site and render it according to the width of the browser. The ultimate goal for designers should be to seamlessly tailor the UI and UX of a website design across different devices and platforms.
What Is The Significance Of Responsive Design?
Knowing your audience and what device they’re using to view your website is a critical component of responsive web design. Mobile devices now account for approximately 56% of all website traffic in the United States. It is critical to design your website for different devices, but it becomes more difficult when designing for different web browsers.
Each major web browser has a mobile version that renders websites differently. What makes it even more difficult is that numerous browser versions must be supported—you can’t expect everyone to be using the most recent version. As a result, it’s so vital that the design works and responds to a wide range of browser versions.
What Website Dimensions Should I Create?
There is no such thing as a “standard website size.” There are hundreds of devices available, and model sizes and screen resolutions change regularly. And each website attracts users on a variety of devices. Google Analytics can help you determine which browsers and web page sizes are most popular for your site. So, with an infinite number of browser sizes and devices to choose from, how do you design responsively without going insane?
Create At Least Three Layouts
A responsive website design should include at least three layouts for various browser widths. The numbers we provide are what we currently use at 99designs, but they are not hard and fast rules.
- Small: less than 600px. This is how most phones will display content.
- Medium 600px – 900px is considered medium. This is how most tablets, large phones, and small netbook-style computers will display content.
- Large Over 900px in size – This is how most personal computers will display content.
It is noted that each of these layouts must comprise the same text and graphical elements, but they should be designed to display that content in the best way possible based on the user’s device. The content becomes unreadable when the page is scaled down to fit on smaller screen sizes, but it becomes much more readable when the content is scaled relative to one another and switched to one column.
Important Aspects to Think
- Don’t create a design for the most recent mobile device with a specific screen size. Rather, build your site around your content. How will the layout and elements work on a desktop, and how will they interact with one another on a mobile device?
- Flexible images are critical when creating a responsive website. You must consider how an image will scale. What will it look like on a large desktop screen, a tablet screen, and a small mobile screen? From a development standpoint, the code will allow images to scale to the width of the browser window using a percentage value.
- The user experience is critical – Responsive design must be more than simply converting a desktop site to a mobile screen. While using a mobile device, we must consider the user’s experience, interaction, and the essential content they are primarily looking for.
- On a mobile device, navigation is critical. There are several popular methods for assembling large menus and content. It could be in the familiar hamburger menu, a simple dropdown selection, expand/collapse fields, or horizontally scrolling tabs like YouTube.
Final Thoughts
The best thing you can do is stay up to date on the latest UI/UX best practices, design your content, keep your images flexible, consider your navigation, and remember that user experience is more important.
