web design

6 Tips for Creating a Responsive Website

by Mike Ditka

Want your responsive website design to be proud of? This is definitely not an easy job. Even though your project looks pretty good from a design point of view, there are still a lot of things that can destroy it over time.

Here we have some tips to make your responsive web more leverage and to save your time in the creation process so that you achieve your goals with a responsive website that looks the most cool 😀

Responsive Web Tips

  1. Focus on Content

Mobile-first, desktop-first or whatever approach you use or the like, the most important thing to remember is content. Content should always drive the structure and organization of the website. So, the first thing to do is to become more familiar with the website content. This should be done before you write program code, before creating any wireframes or mockups. The sooner you do this step, the better.

Take advantage of Wireframes as an Early Stage of Web Design
Guide to Creating Wireframes for Web Designers — Ebook

  1. Bandwidth
    One thing to consider when creating a responsive website is bandwidth. All this means that you have to thoroughly consider what you have to provide to optimize everything you can. Of course this is related to optimization, using a smaller image file size, optimizing CSS and Javascript files by making them compressed or in minify.
  2. Phone, Tablet, Desktop, and….
    We can’t deny, when creating a responsive website we don’t only focus on 3 types or categories of devices (PC, Tablet, Phone), you have to remember that the device is not just that, nowadays people open your website from various devices, such as smartwatches, ebook readers, mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, netbooks, notebooks, ultrabooks, desktops, widescreens and more. So give yourself a little time to make your website so that it can accommodate these tools.
  3. Typography
    Basically the website is 95% typography. Most of the content we consume every day is typography dependent, be it blog posts or infographics. So use a good font for your website. Consider the size of the font file that will be loaded, consider the font size when the website is opened on a small screen, consider the font color so that it is clearly visible on the visitor’s screen, use font types that are easy to read and not confusing.
  4. Javascript & Performance
    When we talk about performance, Javascript can be the main influencer. Javascript has become very popular in recent years, the plugins are so many and beautiful, the animations are amazing. Finally, web designers arbitrarily use lots of plugins so that their website looks amazing, without thinking about the performance of the website later, it’s not half-hearted that dozens of jquery plugins are loaded simultaneously because the website uses a lot of effects and others. This is certainly very burdensome website later. Usually, we can see this in multipurpose templates, where templates can be used for all types of websites, and to make that the developer usually includes all the plugins used by these types of websites.
  5. Retina Display
    The last point we need to pay attention to is how your website looks on devices that already use retina displays. These screens have a higher pixel density meaning the ability to display more pixels and a much better, smoother display. In short, you can see more detail in high resolution or less in low resolution images.
    The point is to think about including images for higher resolutions that will be displayed only when the user is using a device with a retina display feature.

Summary

Responsive design isn’t just about creating websites that look great on smartphones, tablets and desktops. To create a truly responsive experience there’s a lot more to keep in mind and pay attention to. Hopefully these tips will help you achieve your goals.

See you in the next TWD (Web Design Tutorial) article.