Responsive web design is more than just ensuring that your website looks pretty. It’s about being able to engage your visitors regardless of the platform or device that they’re using to access your business’s website.
Keeping your web design engaging should be your top priority. To achieve this with a responsive layout, below are some tips from one of the best Kansas City web design firms.
1. Make Your Words Strong
Creating a responsive website design means that you’re planning for viewers with all different types of devices using different screen resolutions and different aspect ratios. It is vital to make sure that what you put on your page can be read, so choosing a strong font that scales well is key to responsive success.
As the elements of your page shrink and stretch, so should the text in your chosen font. On the other hand, don’t be afraid to mix in different fonts to create the right feel for your website. Most websites using a responsive web design employ this technique.
2. Appeal Visually with Amazing Images
Typography goes hand-in-hand with imagery. Each can be used alone to create a satisfactory website, but the real trick is to combine them together. Ensure that your images represent your website’s purpose. Make sure they’re high quality and as vivid as you need them to be.
Choose images that can deal with being scaled and cropped down. The best images for responsive design are those that look good regardless of size.
3. Navigation Shouldn’t Be Neglected
Visitors need to be able to navigate your content. If they can’t or it’s hard to do so, then they won’t. Ensure that your website’s navigation is both easy to use and represents the right style. You want visitors to be able to think “That’s neat.” while they’re browsing your website to make their experience even more intriguing.
Most of the responsive designs that we do at Fox Web Creations enables features that can be “scaled back” to more basic designs. This adds another layer of user friendliness for your viewers that may not necessarily have the latest and most updated browsers or machines.
4. Scrutinize the Small Details
The small details of your website can be what makes or breaks a responsive design. For example, load times that are short for computer users may take ages for users trying to access your website from their phone. If the bottleneck occurs at the user’s device, then upgrading your server to the most capable T3 or higher line may not be enough. You need to ensure that the user is treated to something interactive while those required loading times are dealt with.
Think about what your website needs when it shrinks, transitions and resizes. What small touches could make the experience better? What special effects could you layout use to better hold your audience’s attention?
For example, a website that is devoted to showing users “slides” instead of pages should have some sort of transition. Depending upon the purpose of that website, this could be a page turning effect, a simple fade-to-black transition or something as complex as a checkerboard fade.
5. Be Creative
No one single element of web design will yield a better return on your investment than a few drops of creativity. Just because your website should be accessible to as many people as possible doesn’t mean that it should be boring.
Responsive design offers an entirely different type of layout that only professional web designers can give. When used correctly, it can engage readers in ways that traditional static designed sites couldn’t even fathom.
Breaking out of the idea that a website should be no more than a number of pages bound together under the same domain will result in a website that your audience honestly enjoys. If you can manage this, then you’ll see more return visits, a better return on your investment and more. Please feel free to contact Fox Web Creations for more information on responsive web design.
