Responsive Web Design Tips and Tricks for 2017

In 2016, More than 70% of the internet usage is carried out through mobile devices. And the usage of desktop has dropped down by 16% in the last year.

Since the first Smartphone development, the UX expectations of consumers have risen significantly. According to data from Google, 72% of users are more likely to revisit a site if it is mobile friendly. This is one of the biggest reason Google has put a lot of weight for responsive design in its algorithm. Nirmal one of the design agency in Sydney increased its conversion by 77 percent by just changing its design to responsive.

Tired of data? Let’s dive into the real meat.

The tips and tricks you should know to succeed in 2017

Think about proper scalable Navigation

Navigation is one of the most important factors in website design. It has been a challenging aspect of every designs. And, many designers fail to meet the conditions consistently.

First thing first:

You need to design a scalable navigation menu that has an aesthetic value on both desktop & mobile devices. Larger and complex menus that work fine on big screens won’t work on small screens. So, you need to create a responsive navigation menu for different screen sizes.

Some of the popular responsive navigation menus are hidden navigation and horizontal swipe navigation.

These navigation menus are most popular today, especially for mobile websites. Consistency is the key, when it comes to responsive navigation.

Content, only useful content Pay special attention to the content in your website. You have an option of adding more content in desktop, so people stuff more content in their website which is a bad practice. Concentrate on the content and features that are the most important for your website that gives a user the exact information they are looking for.

You must work within responsive functionality and try to include only important content which keeps your user engaged. Also, don’t forget the fact that Content is King, So add only unique and engaging content which is liked by both users and Google.

Typography matters

Typography of your website plays a vital role in the readability of your website. Make sure that you use font-size, line-height and width that fit in different sized screens. Typefaces that might work well in large and medium screens might be too small for small screens like mobiles.

So, consider using larger font sizes, which will dramatically improve readability of your website. Don’t forget to balance headings and pay attention to line length, background and font color. It is best to use a line length of approx. 60-75 characters. If you are worrying that, in large screens there will be too much space left then, think about filling that space with an image or sidebars.

Yes to only responsive images

Images are the most effective and great way to grab attention of your reader. Research shows more than 60% of consumers are more likely to consider a business whose images show up in local search results and articles with images get more than 94% more total views than other articles with no images. We live in a visual world, where images are the most interactive way. So, it is most important to include images in your site. But, the thing is, large images have negative effect on download speeds of mobile devices and it too hampers the site loading speed.

Try to include the images that you think is necessary for your site and reconsider elements such as sliders with multiple large images. Upload only optimized images which are flexible with adaptive sizing. Use the appropriate format to store those images. Using optimized  images is surely going to make your site load faster, which is also good for ranking of your site in Google.

Make your layout responsive with Flexbox

Consider using Flexbox to make your layout responsive. Flexbox stands for Flexible Box layout which is a new layout module in CSS3. The Flexbox layout module makes your website responsive to different devices by modifying the width or height of its children to fill the available space in the best possible way on different screen sizes.

You can start using Flexbox by simply giving a parent container the display setting of “flex”, then selecting how the children element within that parent container distribute themselves within it. This layout module is simpler than we thought, that’s the reason many designers find it easier than a pie.

Optimized clickable buttons

While designing a responsive website, you should not forget to pay attention to the different input methods used in the site. It is very important to have a right color and style of your call to action buttons. It should pop out from the page and be easily visible and clickable. Try to keep the design of your call to action button simple and familiar to your user. For example, rectangular and circular buttons are popular and familiar to users; it has been in trend for years now.

Consider using these designs. Being too much creative with your buttons might end up making your visitors confused. Not only the style and color, but your button sizes and links also matters a lot. Aim a button of height 36px and give touchable targets of height min. 48px.

Test on real devices, its important

There’s no doubt on how important the planning of your design is, but, it is also a crucial step to know how your design is going to function in real devices. With lots of mobile emulators available in the web today, it has become a lot easier to check the responsiveness of your design. These emulators are great and doe work fine, but, many of these emulators only replicate the various screens but not the actual functionality of different operating systems of the device. So, nothing can beat testing your design on actual devices. Make sure, you have a variety of devices with different screen sizes and test your design on all those devices thoroughly.

Finally Think Responsive, Design Responsive

Responsive web design is continuing evolving; it has changed the web for better. It is impossible to predict what changes responsive design is going to bring in future, whatever it brings; it is surely going to bring better changes. In the above article, we point out some of the responsive web design tips and tricks that you need to follow to make your website responsive in 2017.