People spend a lot of time on their phones nowadays. Just think about it, what do you use more frequently in your free time: your laptop or your phone? For most of us, the answer is obvious.
Having a website that’s not mobile-friendly could completely ruin its potential. This is why you should always rely on responsive website design. It doesn’t only look much more professional but it’s also a great way to attract more traffic.
So, how do you make your website responsive?
In this article, we will provide you with the best tips to do this as easily as possible.
So without further ado, let’s get to it!
Table of Contents
Plan it out
Before you start optimizing your website for mobile, you should have a clear plan and precise goals. You should organize your website around the content, and never the opposite. Without a clear content structure, you’ll probably encounter some difficulties when designing.
Try to think like a future user! Are there any websites you encountered that had annoying features on mobile? What makes a mobile version of a website easy to navigate? How large should the buttons be to make it comfortable for the user? Do you plan on using images?
All of these questions must have clear answers to them before you even start creating the design.
img source: unsplash.com
Navigation
When it comes to navigation the key is to keep it as simple as possible. Make your navigation obvious to the user and keep in mind that you’re working with smaller screens. You don’t want to make your buttons too small, or your menus undiscoverable. It’s crucial to simplify your navigation options as much as you can. Complex and overdone navigation simply doesn’t look good and it will be counterintuitive for your visitors that use their mobile devices to access your website.
All in all, having a simple navigation menu and large enough buttons is of the utmost importance when building a responsive website.
Create your website with mobile in mind
Keeping the mobile-friendliness in mind before anything else will make the process of creating a website so much easier. Remember, if it looks good on your mobile device, it will look good on larger screens too. So yes, always start from mobile responsiveness.
When it comes to mobile web design, less is more. Don’t overload your website with unnecessary options. Make it simple but visually appealing.
Nobody wants to see tons of unorganized content and dozens of different navigation items. It just makes your website less functional, and your visitor will likely lose interest fast.
img source: unsplash.com
Use mobile-friendly templates
Investing in a mobile-friendly framework will make your job so much easier. There are various options available from WordPress to Weebly, and they all offer their own templates in a form of themes and plug-ins. If you want to check out some great examples you can click here to view a huge range of responsive Weebly themes.
Using a good website builder is the best option for anyone looking to build a responsive website. You’ll be able to choose and customize their existing themes and bring your vision to life in no time, all while keeping it mobile-friendly.
Optimize images
Your images have to be properly optimized to fit different screens well. You don’t want the images to be blurry or oversized, so make sure you find the optimal scaling. You could always ask a professional graphic designer for some assistance, but you should know how to utilize CSS for the best results.
There are tons of useful image resizing tools you can find online. The important thing to know is that images should be in their appropriate formats. For example, logos should be kept in PNG, while carousel images should always be in JPG.
All in all, knowing how to scale and resize images to fit different screens is an absolute must when it comes to responsive web design!
img source: unsplash.com
Responsive CSS
Learning CSS is a must for all front-end developers and web designers. It’s fairly simple to learn and master, and it won’t take longer than a month to start comfortably working with it.
Still, when it comes to responsive web design, you should pay attention to the CSS technique called media queries. It will help you style your website depending on the screen size, and it’s considered a standard in RWD.
If you’re not quite comfortable with the idea of CSS, don’t worry, it’s quite simple. It just styles the HTML elements that appear on your website, and it’s pretty simple to grasp once you start getting into it.
It doesn’t matter if you’re using a web builder like Wix or Weebly, being comfortable with CSS and HTML is essential if you’re planning on building a beautiful and responsive website.
Test and track your traffic
Using analytic tools is an absolute must in 2024. In this way, you’ll be able to know if your website is successful or not, and you’ll be able to determine where your mobile traffic goes. This will help you to make improvements where necessary and learn which parts of your webpage need additional optimization.
Learning more about your visitors and their devices will help you further develop your website and make it even more responsive. Whatever you do, there will always be space for further improvement, so make sure you know where and what to improve.
img source: unsplash.com
The takeaway
Responsive design is a huge trend in the web development world, and it’s becoming a necessity. More and more people rely on their phones to explore the web, and if your website is not mobile-friendly enough, chances are you’ll be losing a great deal of traffic.
So yes, making your blog or a business webpage mobile-friendly should be high on your list of priorities. The easiest way to do it is to use intuitive web builders like WordPress or Weebly and make the best out of their responsive themes and templates. Other important things to consider are learning CSS, optimizing your content and images, and keeping it all simple.
All in all, responsive design is the future, and it’s a trend that won’t go away anytime soon.
