Web Design Best Practices: Creating Responsive Layouts on Desktop and Mobile

In today’s digital landscape, a business website acts as a central hub where target audiences can access key information about the company’s services, products, and brand identity. In today’s technical landscape, more and more devices allow viewing these sites from a range of screen sizes and resolutions: desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and more.

Considered together, this means that modern-day web design best practices must take into account responsive web design principles and recommendations. Not sure what these are? Don’t worry, – we have prepared a comprehensive guide on the most important practices to create seamless user experiences on desktop and mobile alike.

Why Is Responsive Web Design Important?

Responsive website design provides an intuitive and seamless user experience across all devices, increasing user engagement and satisfaction. By adapting your site’s content, layout, and navigation to different screen resolutions, you can ensure that your audience can easily access the information without having to scroll or zoom excessively. As a result, the visitors will be likely to stay on your website for longer, review more information, and end up converting into customers.

7 Responsive Web Design Best Practices to Ensure Seamless User Experience

Whenever building your website, follow these 7 responsive web design best practices to ensure that your website is user-friendly, readable, and functional on all devices.

1. Develop a Responsive Layout

A responsive layout allows a website to scale its content to fit the user’s device and screen resolution. As such, a responsive website can be easily viewed from desktop computers, tablets, or smartphones, without sacrificing the content readability or the site functionality. For instance, a two-column layout on a desktop can be converted into a single-column layout on mobile. Similarly, an in-line image on a desktop can be moved into a separate line on mobile.

Having a responsive design will improve your user experience, boost Google rankings, and increase conversions.

2. Use a Large and Readable Font

The generally accepted recommendation for desktop font size is 14 pixels, – but this font size might not be as legible on a smaller screen. The best way to find an ideal font size is to test your website on both desktop and mobile devices.

Avoid experimenting with new fonts, as they might be challenging to read on mobile. To maximize readability, try bolding certain lines of text and stay consistent with the font style throughout. Stick with high-contrast fonts and use black text wherever possible, – this will help users to clearly see the text, even when there are reflections on their device screens.

3. Optimize Website Speed

Your site’s loading speed can make or break a great first impression for your audience. Indeed, a site that loads in one second or less is likely to have a three times higher conversion rate than that of a website that takes five seconds to load.

A variety of free online tools are available to check your website speed, such as Page Speed Insights. Once you enter your site’s URL, you will receive a free report that outlines your site’s loading speed and assigns it a performance score for both mobile and desktop viewing.

One way to boost your site’s speed is to host your videos on a third-party site like YouTube and embed them within your content. It is also recommended to compress all the images prior to uploading them on your site.

4. Compress Images

When uploading images to your website, don’t forget to compress them to reduce the file size and keep your site loading speed swift. When website images are compressed, the total volume of data that needs to be downloaded for website viewing is reduced, thus improving the website speed. This, in turn, ensures a smoother user experience and better search engine rankings.

A number of online tools are available to compress images for free, without sacrificing their quality. In addition, make sure to stick with proper image formats like JPEG XR, JPEG 2000, WebP, and AVIF, which all result in smaller file sizes than PNGs and JPEGs of similar quality.

5. Change Button Size and Placement

Oftentimes, small buttons or buttons in the wrong spot on the page can be difficult to use when viewing a website from a mobile device. Because most mobile users use their thumbs for navigation, all the buttons should be large enough to be comfortably hit with a thumb.

Another important responsive web design best practice is to ensure that users can hit any button on your website with their thumb when scrolling through the mobile site. As such, it is recommended to locate buttons toward the bottom of the page.

6. Space Out Links

Similarly, consider how difficult it may be to click a link with a thumb rather than by using a computer mouse. To help people click the link they want – even when viewing the website through a mobile device, – make sure to space out your links throughout the page.

It is also important to limit the total number of links to reduce the number of redirections that may lead the reader away from your site. If you do include a link that takes users to another website, make sure it opens in a new tab – or include a message that reminds the readers they are about to leave.

7. Avoid Pop-Ups

Pop-ups may work well on desktop versions of websites, but they rarely do so on mobile devices. These small pop-up windows can be challenging to view on smaller screens, and it is often difficult to control when they are triggered. In addition, users may have trouble closing pop-ups when viewing the site from a mobile device, because the “X’ in the corner may be too small or not visible on the screen at all.

Contact ZoneCloud to Build a Responsive Website for Your Business

While desktop and mobile web design best practices may seem overwhelming, don’t worry. Most, if not all, top-performing websites on the web have been built by professional web design and development agencies, – like ZoneCloud. Get in touch with us today to get a free quote on your responsive web design project.