Why Responsive Web Design is important?

Smartphones and tablets have changed the approach toward design and user experience. Before the creation of mobile devices with innovative web-browsing ability, web designers had only one primary challenge to deal with keeping the same look and feel of their websites in various desktop computer browsers. Though, interacting with sites on handheld devices is not the same as doing that on a desktop computer. Factors like Click versus Touch, Screen-size, Pixel-resolution, optimized markup and many more have become essential while making sites with Responsive Design.

Before we move forward to why Responsive Design is important? Let's take a look at what is Responsive Design first?

Responsive Web Design. What is it?

Responsive Web Design is a method of laying-out and coding a website so that it can provide an optimal viewing experience, ease of reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling through an extensive range of devices (from desktops to palmtops).

When creating a responsive web design, the designer should make sure that the website's navigation elements, screen-layouts, text, images and other UI elements rearrange themselves on a variety of devices. Thus, one need not spend extra time and money in creating and maintaining one "desktop version" and another "mobile version" of his/her website.

Now, we can move on to the importance of Responsive Design while crafting websites.

Time & Money

People say that making a responsive website is expensive and it's a fact, the cost to make a responsive website is somewhat more than making a conventional website, but the expenses to duplicate a website for handheld devices gets completely eliminated, cutting total development costs, significantly. Plus, a responsive design cuts the total ownership cost, by means of taking away the effort to maintain different versions of a website. Thus, spending the money in responsive website design is the smartest decision.

Increased use of Mobile Devices

Mobile internet users getting increased every day exponentially. As more and more peopleget used to browsing the web through their smartphones and tablets, it is foolish for any website publisher to overlook responsive web design.

The UX (User experience)

While, content is king and discoverability of content are leading success metrics; it is the UX that helps visitors to consume content on any website through the device of their choice, anytime. And, that's why responsive web design is about providing the best user experience regardless of whether they use a desktop computer, a smartphone, a tablet or a smart-TV. Responsive Websites are uncertain to devices and their operating systems. It ensures that users get the best and steady experience of a website on any device of the user's choice.

Thus, rather than classifying website content into dissimilar, device-specific experiences, it is smarter to embrace the responsive web design approach. That's not to say there isn't a business case for separate sites geared toward specific devices, but that kind of design-thinking does not have to be our default. Now, digital content is expected to be viewed on a range of different experiences. Responsive web design offers the way forward.

Don’t Make, These Mistakes - Web Design

Today, many websites suffer from mistakes that can dramatically influence their effectiveness. Here are some common mistakes with helpful information on how to avoid them. Some of these difficulties merely result in irritation, whilst others will hinder or prevent visitors to your site from accessing the material or functionality that you have placed there. Here are some mistakes that we must avoid with respect to the development of a website.

1. Role of Website - The biggest mistake we can make is not defining the website's role in the overall strategy of your organisation, in the first place. It doesn't matter how well or poorly your site is implemented. Once the strategic purposes and role of the website are understood, it can be built in a manner to achieve its goals.

2. Graphics - The graphics on your website should enrich the user experience. These need to be kept in balance enough to make sure that the site is attractive, and the same time functional too, but not enough to create mess and slow down the user experience. Graphics need to be enhanced to make sure that the site is displayed at a reputable speed.

3. Navigation - of your website must be intuitive. You need to ensure that the site is well organised and presented in a manner so that the visitor can easily get what he is looking for. Visitor easily gets off of such sites which are hard to navigate. Stick to standard techniques and standard locations for navigation elements such as links and menus.

4. Flash - If used sparingly and aesthetically, it can give out great results. It can increase enthusiasm and movement to your site and capabilities that are difficult or not possible using only HTML. Unfortunately not everyone has flash and not everyone has the bandwidth to support flash.

5. Pop-up Windows - Unless and until you have a very good reason, avoid pop-up windows. They are very irritating and many advanced browsers block them.

6. Dead Links - Always make sure all of the links on your site is working and they must. Nothing is more unprofessional than having users visit your site and encounter broken links. It can weaken the confidence of visitors in your site and finally your organisation. Always make sure to test all links in your site. External links from your site that you no longer control must be checked regularly, especially if they link deep into your content of site.

7. Monitoring Your Site - Today, many tools are available for monitoring a site. The insights they can provide are valuable to understand the behaviour of users on your site, helping you in determining where they come from, how they found your site and the kind of content that they are looking for and which links are receiving the most attention. Many excellent tools are available free of charge; there is no excuse not to monitor your site.

There are many things we need to keep in mind while designing a website and many can be understood if we put ourselves in visitor's place. Be a visitor of your own site.