The benefits of responsive design
Did you know that designing the same site for different platforms increases traffic?
Responsive design is smart design. Globally, 56 percent of internet traffic comes from mobile users. Desktop users take up 42 percent, and the remaining usage comes from tablet users. Responsive, mobile-first design practices can help to get your website working on different devices. However, formatting the size of text and elements may not be enough to make your website responsive. You may need to dig deeper by evaluating the responsiveness of the user experience to make your website easier to use.
Responsiveness in web design is an approach that considers the user experience on multiple platforms. Essentially, this approach responds to the users’ behavior, environment and platform.
When a desktop website gets translated into a mobile website, you will often see a truncated form of the navigation. Typically, it’s presented as a drawer menu or a dropdown hamburger menu. This means that all the information available on a desktop screen is not immediately seen on mobile or tablet. It remains hidden on tablet or mobile unless the user scrolls. Due to the smaller size of the screen, it takes more gestures to get through all the information. This creates more work for them to access what they want.
Keeping all the same information displayed across all devices can use up a lot of space on smaller screens. Consider chunking information into smaller groups and allow for more visual space to highlight key information.
Elements that require a click on desktop can be hard to use on tablet and mobile.
Customers may complain about the accessibility of certain elements. While a button may be clickable on the desktop website, it might be harder to push on tablet and mobile due to the small size. It could also be effected by its proximity to other elements. Conversely, if the element is too big it can cover vital information or take up space that could be used more efficiently.