The interest of users in mobile devices is widening each day. Especially during last year, in June 2020, the research on mobile devices peaked and led to massive content consumption.

Millions of users switched to working on their smartphone to seek answers to their questions. So this time, instead of using laptops, the smartphones launched most of the query search.

Online business owners, marketers and influencers captured this trend quickly and local business owners started migrating to cyberspace to expand their reach. The solution for local business owners, marketers, etc. was to implement a responsive website that could work both on the laptop as well on the user’s smartphone without losing design orientation. Web developer crafted responsive website design and with its implementation, the sales up-scaled even through unprecedented times.

Responsive website design or fluid designs are not new in the digital realms. The approach of this web design type is to make web pages respond to a variety of screen sizes, for example, iPad, iPhone, Tablet, Laptop, etc. A responsive web design uses fluid elements, grids, and flexible images so that the orientation of the layout can easily fit itself in different screens. The first website to implement fluid designs was Audi. But implementing mobile website design comes with certain challenges. The corporation like Sony, Microsoft, and Salesforce faced almost similar challenges while entering the responsive website domain. Here, check out the top 5 problems of responsive website design with their fixes.

Older Internet Won’t Support It

Today, the mobile-first approach is gaining popularity. While the new fluid designs are convenient, yet the older version of IE won’t support it. Web developers and designers found the fix for this problem by changing the page layout. Alternatively, using a conditional IE stylesheet was one of the solutions.

Content Visibility

Responsive websites use UI elements and features like ‘search’, dashboard, widgets, etc. Sometimes because of these elements, there was clutter on smaller screens which reduced content visibility and readability. An old solution was to hide or remove content from the screen, but then it would also reduce the information on the webpage. Later, this problem got fixed by optimization of a web page.

Time Taking Development

One issue with responsive websites is that it’s testing time is longer. The reason is that the design needs to perform on a variety of screen sizes and therefore the development itself can take twice as much time as compared to a regular webs design. A fix for this problem got implemented by using an agile development model. The iterative approach saves time, efforts and resources.

Smaller Screens

A common problem with responsive design surfaces in showing data on small screens. The tables won’t work and the information gets easily cluttered. The answer to this challenge was in taking a unique approach with elements of web design. So, they built all the tables on a webpage much smaller and other unnecessary elements either got removed or shifted to sides.

Richer Experience

Clients expect to deliver an interactive and immersive experience for their customers. In such cases, they preferred responsive designs to work on both big and small screen devices. Yet, the problem that followed responsive design was slow webpage loading speed. One of the ways out of these challenges is to perform conditional loading, which means leaving everything out and filling only what’s needed.

Bonus: Website Navigation

To enhance the user experience, boost conversion and better ROI’s, it’s important to make web design more self-explanatory. Today, web designs are very intuitive and easy-to-navigate. With the change in trend, web navigation also needed a little revamping. Web designers solved this issue with the help of testing multiple use cases, making it possible to implement a unique navigation decision.

We have covered an overview of mobile website designs. These designs aim to deliver a rich experience, especially to smartphone users. This would mean the optimization of web elements like images, data, tables etc. while keeping in mind easy-to-navigate flow. It’s safe to say that mobile website designs are changing the way we interact with business and brands.

That said, delivering responsive designs was not possible without discovering the right methods and techniques. Here, check out some techniques used in crafting a responsive design.

Media Queries

At the front-end level, users switch web pages and navigate through websites using a single mouse click. Most of the action occurs in the background, which includes starting jumps from one webpage to another. CSS transitions and animation controlled these ‘jump’s which resulted in a smooth switching between first style and second style of a webpage.

Data Table

We covered tables in the problem of responsive design earlier. In a responsive mobile website design, they display the data table in a wide format (by default). On small screens, you can pinch out the screen to reduce the size of a table, but then the text readability decreases. That is why nowadays most websites use pie charts and are adapted to mini graphics.

Navigation Menu

A responsive design uses the technique of converting static rows into building a menu with drop-down option. So, when a user opens a website on a smaller screen, the navigation menu remains functional. The drop-down technique offered an elaboration to the products and services offered by the business/brand.

Using Available Space

Responsive mobile website designs leverage on-screen space to make subtle yet impactful changes in media queries. The technique allowed web designers to use fluid design to fill the sidebars. For wider browsers, this technique proved useful. They then changed the similar technique to tackle the challenges of the narrow width of some browsers.

Flexible Images

At a grassroots level, flexible image plays an important role in developing fluid mobile website designs. This technique leverages responsive layout to build a design that can easily function in a variety of screen resolutions. This means an effective design will keep its orientation intact both on bigger and smaller screen sizes. There are tools that allow web designers to make fluid images for a responsive design.

Fluid Videos

To make a responsive mobile website design interesting, web designers perform optimization on videos. This behind the screen technique affects website loading speed and overall performance. Using this technique would help in filling up the video content space with optimized video so that even if the screen orientation changes, the video continues to play with no interruption.

The key to making a responsive web design includes working together with a lot of elements. Web designers need to study and practice to craft responsive web designs. Nowadays, there are a lot of online platforms and organizations that extend services like e-learning for mobile website designing.

Because of the growing demand for responsive website designs, this technology is getting all the attention of business owners and brands. Slowly it is becoming easier and affordable to get a responsive design for the mobiles. That said, the evergreen elements of fluid designs continue to support web designers. Here, check-out some key elements of responsive designs.

Brand Priority

In 2021, build bigger communities and more conversion by investing in branding. The key is to offer personalization to the customers. This trend picked its pace in June 2020, thanks to lockdown. All over the world, millions of people switched to brand personalization to meet the changing needs of the consumer. Giants like Amazon, Netflix, etc. successfully capture the new wave of trends.

Hand-Held Device Orientations

Responsive mobile website design layout depends on who we hold our smartphones. This means knowing whether a user holds a device with either hand or single hand. Keep that in mind, the web designer designs the navigation menus and places other elements. You might have noticed that the search bar is often on top of websites, most of the pictures appear in the center of the display and so on.

Navigation! Navigation! Navigation!

It’s hard to not to emphasize the navigation factor of a fluid design. The reason responsive designs are popular is that they offer a straightforward way to the users to the products and services. Also, consistent navigation across a variety of screen sizes adds to a brand’s overall value. The rule of thumb to follow is to use a sidebar for reducing the clutter on the screen.

On-screen Text

Selecting the right font is important because it affects the overall readability. Fonts are available in variety, different sizes, and you can experiment with pixels as well. Using simple fonts, you can build a better and stronger connection with your audience. Avoid fonts which are harder to read because on a small screen they might become a reason for clutter.

Clear Call-To-Action

A full-fluid design will give an ample amount of space to place CTA’s (call-to-action) on web content. It’s especially important because that’s how you can start the process of in-bounding customers to the sales funnel. A responsive design must include a space for a flexible CTA’s button that can adjust to change in screen size.

The responsive design opened opportunities to establish an online presence for business and brands. Running closely to fluid website designs are mobile applications which use similar techniques. If you have a budget, then it’s a good idea to go with both a mobile website and mobile application.

Mobile Website vs. Mobile Application

Understand that both mobile websites and mobile applications are for hand-held devices. A mobile website works like any other website, it has basic HTML pages and other elements, for example, Images, video, search bar, etc. They are the new standard of web designing and can scale according to the screen size. Mobile applications are downloadable from the Play Store or App Store. You can install a mobile application on your smartphone and use it on-the-go.

Which one is better?

One of the core questions is whether mobile websites are better or mobile applications? If you have the budget, go for both. It also depends on the end goals of the users. So, for example, in case your idea is to make an interactive game, then perhaps it’s best to go with a mobile application. Otherwise, in case your idea is to put mobile-friendly content online, go with a mobile website and reach a maximum number of users.

Key Advantage Of Responsive Mobile Websites

Investing in a mobile website is always a good idea because it is a practical approach to reach your audience. Plus, mobile websites are:-

1. Instantly Available: Responsive mobile devices are accessible without downloading.
2. Fully Compatible: We can use a single responsive website across a variety of screen sizes.
3. Easy to find: Responsive websites rank better in SERPS, therefore they are easier to find.
4. Easy to share: To share a website, all you need to do is copy/paste the URL between users.
5. Budget-friendly: Considering the time and cost of development, getting a responsive website is much more affordable.
6. Provide a broader range: A good responsive website is a hub of relevant information and attracts a lot of users.
7. Easy to maintain: Fixing a bug of a responsive website is easier than a mobile application.

Conclusion

Now you know almost everything about mobile website designs. It was important to compare mobile websites to mobile applications for overall better understanding. Some popular companies like Dropbox, Slack, etc are already using mobile website designs. For an uncluttered user experience on smartphones, they use different techniques like flexible grids and content optimization. I expect that in upcoming years mobile web designers will create responsive layouts for smart wearables and that would be a completely new challenge and could cause unlocking a new world. We already have interactive applications on smartwatches, one more leap in the technology and you could order a pizza from a small device on your wrist.