Now a days Responsive Web Designing is a very important role play. In SEO point of you responsive web designing is very important. Typically, Responsive Websites perform better and are easier to maintain. One thing not mentioned above is that a challenge of having a separate mobile site is that you will need to build the authority of this site from scratch, and who wants to go to that extra trouble?
Think responsive
When responsive web design began, designers started by planning for the biggest screens then scaled down until they’d reached the smallest. All too often, they included fancy elements that didn’t break down well to fit a smaller screen, which led to the mobile version being a watered-down copy of the original and feeling like somewhat of an afterthought.
Today, mobile devices comprise the largest volume of traffic for many websites, so mobile users expect, and deserve, the same quality of browsing experience as other users. But that doesn’t mean the larger screen sizes should be ignored either. Many people still use a large desktop, and even more jump between different screens throughout the day.
The best way to tackle this is by adopting a ‘mobile first’ approach, designing for the smallest screen first then adding elements as necessary as you move up the screen sizes.
Pay attention to the content
Don’t fall into the trap of a ‘fit-to-size’ approach, where your focus is on fitting all the elements onto a page without considering their context. Start by concentrating on the content and features that are the most important, and being brutal about which elements face the chop. As you move up the different screen sizes, question their inclusion at each stage – if you have to think about it for too long, it probably doesn’t need to be there.
Once you’re clear on the content and features you require, you can start work on the layout. The sheer variety of screen sizes means the traditional concept of ‘above the fold’ is pretty much dead. People are used to scrolling – the advent of sites like Facebook and Twitter has seen to that – so design your sites in a way that encourages scrolling, but retains the most important information towards the top of a screen. This includes contact details, CTAs, and on eCommerce sites, the all-important ‘Add to Basket’ button.
Prioritize elements based on their importance to the user, so if you can fit text next to an image on a desktop, think carefully about which is best at capturing your users’ attention on a mobile device, and ensure that comes first. Other elements, such as an accompanying blog image on a preview page, could be left off the mobile version altogether, leaving the focus on the content itself.
Performance
This is a hot topic now in responsive web design. One of the “knocks” on responsive web design is that it performs poorly and drives up load time. We believe that it’s not an issue of responsive web design, but the lack of making effort to address the true problems when building a site. Designers love to load the page with beautiful, full-width photos and videos, which can be great. Just make sure to keep performance in mind and keep the lines of communication open with the rest of the team.
Navigation
We spend a lot of time working on site navigation. There’s a lot to consider here: What kind of trigger will be used to open the nav at small viewport widths? The hamburger icon? Something else? If it’s a multi-level navigation, designing expandable menus for mobile devices is an art form in itself. Make sure to know how users want to navigate and where you or your client want to drive traffic as that could–and should–play an important part in how the navigation is designed. For example, is the desire for the user to drill down into the menu as deep as possible, or is there a desire for the user to hit a “parent” level page that has content or products that will help the user navigate?
Javascript fallbacks
We all love beautiful transitions and animations that make websites a joy to experience. I believe these are important, and often necessary, polish items that can give context to the user when the navigation opens or content is revealed. However, keep in mind that you should implement fallbacks for those users with javascript turned off. I’ve seen a few examples of this where main navigation wouldn’t work with javascript off, which is obviously a bad thing.
Typography
There’s much attention that needs to be paid to typography as the viewport width changes. Type sizes, line lengths, paragraph spacing, and margins all may need to be adjusted. Headlines reflow and may need to be re-evaluated at various widths. Spacing between content sections may need to be emphasized more at smaller widths. It makes most sense to tweak this in browser as you can test typography on actual devices.
Think responsive
When responsive web design began, designers started by planning for the biggest screens then scaled down until they’d reached the smallest. All too often, they included fancy elements that didn’t break down well to fit a smaller screen, which led to the mobile version being a watered-down copy of the original and feeling like somewhat of an afterthought.
Today, mobile devices comprise the largest volume of traffic for many websites, so mobile users expect, and deserve, the same quality of browsing experience as other users. But that doesn’t mean the larger screen sizes should be ignored either. Many people still use a large desktop, and even more jump between different screens throughout the day.
The best way to tackle this is by adopting a ‘mobile first’ approach, designing for the smallest screen first then adding elements as necessary as you move up the screen sizes.
Pay attention to the content
Don’t fall into the trap of a ‘fit-to-size’ approach, where your focus is on fitting all the elements onto a page without considering their context. Start by concentrating on the content and features that are the most important, and being brutal about which elements face the chop. As you move up the different screen sizes, question their inclusion at each stage – if you have to think about it for too long, it probably doesn’t need to be there.
Once you’re clear on the content and features you require, you can start work on the layout. The sheer variety of screen sizes means the traditional concept of ‘above the fold’ is pretty much dead. People are used to scrolling – the advent of sites like Facebook and Twitter has seen to that – so design your sites in a way that encourages scrolling, but retains the most important information towards the top of a screen. This includes contact details, CTAs, and on eCommerce sites, the all-important ‘Add to Basket’ button.
Prioritize elements based on their importance to the user, so if you can fit text next to an image on a desktop, think carefully about which is best at capturing your users’ attention on a mobile device, and ensure that comes first. Other elements, such as an accompanying blog image on a preview page, could be left off the mobile version altogether, leaving the focus on the content itself.
Performance
This is a hot topic now in responsive web design. One of the “knocks” on responsive web design is that it performs poorly and drives up load time. We believe that it’s not an issue of responsive web design, but the lack of making effort to address the true problems when building a site. Designers love to load the page with beautiful, full-width photos and videos, which can be great. Just make sure to keep performance in mind and keep the lines of communication open with the rest of the team.
Navigation
We spend a lot of time working on site navigation. There’s a lot to consider here: What kind of trigger will be used to open the nav at small viewport widths? The hamburger icon? Something else? If it’s a multi-level navigation, designing expandable menus for mobile devices is an art form in itself. Make sure to know how users want to navigate and where you or your client want to drive traffic as that could–and should–play an important part in how the navigation is designed. For example, is the desire for the user to drill down into the menu as deep as possible, or is there a desire for the user to hit a “parent” level page that has content or products that will help the user navigate?
Javascript fallbacks
We all love beautiful transitions and animations that make websites a joy to experience. I believe these are important, and often necessary, polish items that can give context to the user when the navigation opens or content is revealed. However, keep in mind that you should implement fallbacks for those users with javascript turned off. I’ve seen a few examples of this where main navigation wouldn’t work with javascript off, which is obviously a bad thing.
Typography
There’s much attention that needs to be paid to typography as the viewport width changes. Type sizes, line lengths, paragraph spacing, and margins all may need to be adjusted. Headlines reflow and may need to be re-evaluated at various widths. Spacing between content sections may need to be emphasized more at smaller widths. It makes most sense to tweak this in browser as you can test typography on actual devices.
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