The explosion of smartphone popularity over the last five years has made it more important than ever for web designers to create responsive website designs. Mobile Internet browsing surpassed desktop Internet browsing in 2015. That’s right—more people than ever are using their phones as their primary means of surfing the Internet.
What does this mean for web development? Designers must be able to create layouts that automatically adjust to the size of screen on which the site is being viewed. These “responsive” designs, once considered a luxury, are now an absolute necessity.
Here are a few examples of key elements of responsive designs:
- Minimalism: Minimalism is not just an aesthetic choice—it is one that optimizes usability as well. Not only do visual design elements tend to be more simplistic these days, but it is also often a necessity to cut features for a mobile design to properly function. Therefore, the mobile version of a site should be stripped of anything that is not absolutely essential to the user experience to provide the best, most streamlined experience possible for the mobile browser.
- Hidden navigation: Mobile screens do not provide the same amount of room as laptop or desktop screens to be able to see full navigation bars. Therefore, responsive designs tend to make use of the so-called “hamburger menu” (three horizontal lines stacked on top of each other) to hide the navigation. When the user presses the hamburger menu button, he or she then sees a drop-down menu with what is often an abbreviated selection of menu options.
- Single-column layout: Again, a big part of responsive design is properly adjusting the layout of the page to fit any device. Using a single-column design for content and blog posts makes this easier. Having one column on a mobile page allows readers to simply scroll up and down rather than having to move left, right, up and down and occasionally zoom in and out to be able to actually read the content.
- Large tappable links: Another element of responsive design meant to enhance usability for the mobile user is the use of larger links that are more easily tappable with fingers. Smaller links might be harder to hit, or could result in the user tapping an unintended link. The larger links decrease user frustration and create a better overall mobile browsing experience.
These are just a few of the elements of responsive designs we focus on when creating websites for our clients. For more information about the latest web design trends, contact us today at IDMI.Net.