With 1 billion websites on the world wide web, and most of them for business purposes, and 47 new websites published every 5 seconds, the competition on the internet for leads and conversion is growing and the concept of responsive website design becomes more relevant than ever. If you too are planning to publish a business website, here is a quick responsive design as a web development concept and a sneak peek into how web developers in Dubai are utilizing its principles.
What is responsive website design?
According to reputable web development companies in Dubai, responsive website design is a web development approach that ensures websites deliver optimal viewing and interaction experience across a wide range of devices, like desktops and smartphones.
You can also call it a design philosophy that takes care of the website’s overall look and feel on diverse screens. In this approach, designers and developers ensure websites deliver a strong user experience, no matter where and how they are accessed from.
Adaptive vs Responsive Web Design
Adaptive website design means to create multiple fixed layouts for different screen sizes. Responsive website design, in contracts, is a single fluid layout that adjusts to screen sizes where the website is loaded.
Benefits of Responsive Design
With screen adjustments, responsive website design brings important advantages to the website owners, marketers as well as visitors.
1. Improved User Experience
With screen adjustments, users can easily navigate and interact with the website, regardless of the device they are using, and that enhances satisfaction and engagement.
2. Cost-Effectiveness
Instead of creating multiple versions of a website for different devices, a single responsive design can cater to all, and saves development time and costs.
3. Better SEO
Search engines like Google favor responsive websites; that’s because responsive design adds to technical SEO as well as improves user experience. Such websites with high-end UX are easier to crawl and index.
4. Easier Maintenance
Managing one website with a single codebase that runs on multiple screens is simpler and less time-consuming than maintaining multiple versions of the site.
Elements of responsive web design
Moving on from the basics of responsive web design, developers have to keep up with 4 key elements of this approach:
1. Flexible Grids and Layouts
Flexible grid-based layout uses relative length units like percentages rather than fixed units like pixels. Such layouts adapt to different screen sizes and deliver similar user experience.
2. Flexible Images and Media
Web designers and developers also size media likeImages and in relative units to make sure they scale appropriately within their containing elements. This element helps them maintain the visual integrity of the site without horizontal scrolling and misalignment.
3. Media Queries
Developers employ CSS media queries then apply different styles based on the characteristics of the device’s display, such as its width, height, resolution, and orientation. This is a part of KPIs for almost all web development companies in Dubai because it helps development teams adjust the design and layout dynamically for different devices.
4. Viewport Meta Tag
This HTML element is used to control the layout on mobile browsers. The HTML element takes care of website rendering on different devices by setting the viewport width to match the device’s width and scaling.
How Web Developers Implement Responsive Design
Here is a quick responsive website design process:
Step1: Start with a Fluid Grid Layout
Designers define a grid system that uses percentages for widths instead of fixed pixel values. This makes the layout more adaptable.
Step 2: Incorporate Media Queries
Developers write CSS rules within media queries to apply different styles based on the screen size or other device characteristics.
Step 3: Make Images and Media Flexible
Designers and developers ensure that images and videos scale within their containers by setting their max-width to 100%.
Step 4: Test Across Devices
The team regularly tests the website on various devices and screen sizes to ensure that it looks and functions as intended.
Important Concepts in Responsive Website Design
1. Mobile-first approach
In the mobile-first approach, the web designers create interfaces for the smallest screen first and then progressively enhance the design for larger screens. This means that the core functionality and content are accessible on mobile devices and then improved for larger devices. In this approach, designers also ensure that the web design is touch-friendly – the buttons are interactive and tappable.
2. Performance optimization
Designers need to make sure that the websites are up for performance – they have fast loading times, minimal and necessary code that would run even on slowest and limited connections. The developers ensure high performance by minimizing HTTP requests, optimizing image sizes, enabling compression and using separate content delivery networks.
3. Flexible typography
One key tip is to utilize Google fonts in the website design. Google fonts behave well with SEO and are flexible and accessible enough for users.
4. Navigation
Navigation is an important part of website design, and it can be challenging to adapt to different designs when there are too many directories and resulting navigation menus. Developers then implement responsive navigation patterns such as off-canvas menus dropdowns and accordions to maintain and improve usability.
5. Lazy Loading
Not inherently a part of responsive web design, lazy loading still complements the design and development process because it helps with speed optimization of the website. It is a technique that delays the loading of images, videos, frames and other media assets until they are about to enter the viewport. So, it improves the user experience because users can load the pages step-by-step even on low connections and bandwidth, ultimately contributing to the responsive website design.
Conclusion
Considering the growing popularity of responsive web design in the community of web developers, even mobile app development companies in Dubai have started utilizing the process and principles for designing web applications that run on browsers and on mobile applications as well. While the web started with static and progressed to dynamic pages, responsive website design is balancing static elements and dynamic microinteractions to get the fine line of user experience and user interface design.
