By highly responsive websites we mean pages that are quick to respond to your query and are not too cluttered with text and images that will take forever to load on your smartphones and tablets. The user wants seamless functionality when they visit the web on mobile.
No one likes to wait and sit for the website to load. Although much depends on the type of device and connection speed you use but website’s own mechanics also contribute to its responsiveness. People these days are more concerned with how a website would look or feel when viewed on their palm devices.
So let’s look at some tips to turn the website into a highly responsive design:
1. Sense of Purpose
At the helm of anything, mobile or not a clear purpose should be in mind. When the user visits your web page, he should be content that the information he is seeking or the intent he has in mind will be catered for herein. Since the world is largely becoming ‘on-the-go’, it is imperative that websites entail a purpose in order to save time.
2. Easy to Understand/Communicable
The language in which the information is being disseminated should be simple. Remember on-the-go websites should be user-friendly in a way that it helps them understand what’s it about? A good approach is to break that info into headings, sub-headings, bullet points, infographics etc. to make it easy to absorb. Avoid lengthy sentences.
3. Typography
Typography of the website constitutes font and its readability. Generally Sans Serif fonts are encouraged such as Arial and Verdana, and generally, the size should be 16px. From a design perspective, you should maintain at most three fonts and up to three sizes so that your site’s design is functioning at an optimum level.
4. Colors
Color scheme resonates with your user in different ways. How? An amalgam of colors serves as a visually impressive feat for the users. Dissimilar colors for text and background makes the readability easier on user’s eyes.
Selection of exciting colors speaks to the emotional side of the users and should be used for tabs and buttons. In addition, some blank/white space on your website provides a neat and organized feel to it.
5. Images
You can’t argue with the importance of inclusion of images on your site. They say pictures say a lot than mere words. But be mindful in choosing those images. You don’t want to give out a negative message or wrong impression with the picture you thought was suitable. People perceive and interpret certain images differently.
Make sure you to pick high-resolution images so they are clearly visible and not dull or grainy in quality. That’s a letdown for you users. Secondly, if you’re going to use stock photos, the best practice is to purchase them to add to the overall feel of the website. Videos and graphics also fall under this heading.
6. Navigation
Navigation is equally crucial because when users browse your website on their mobile devices, it should feel as good as desktop version if not better. Effective navigation can be achieved by utilizing/ensuring the logical order of web pages on your site, clickable buttons/tabs/drop-down menu bars, breadcrumbs technique etc. This is to enable your user to find effortlessly what he’s seeking.
7. Grid Layouts
A messy website is every user’s worst nightmare. A jumbled set of menus, random pop-ups, and out of place text/images is a recipe for disaster. Hence, employing a grid-based layout will help you arrange your content into certain columns, boxes, and sections (whatever you deem fit).
8. Load Time
Lastly, the factor that cannot be ignored is website’s load time. To improve load times you can resize pictures on your site, merge codes into central CSS or JavaScript file (programmers would know) and by some other tweaks.
Above are some ways you can accomplish your goal of developing a highly responsive website.
Author Bio: Joseph Carey is a professional Web Developer. He specializes in PHP programming languages. Apart from this role, he is also an expert essay writer who assists students who need essay help in UK.