“Now you put water into a cup, and it becomes a cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes a bottle; you put it in a teapot, it becomes a teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” ~Bruce Lee.”
The quote above means that when water is put into different vessels, it remains the same but its shape changes based on the vessel it is put in. So should be your content. Same but different on different screens.
According to Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences.
A responsive web design is generally thought to only fit the design in various screen resolutions, but that’s not all it is about. It is a completely different way of designing. It includes developing flexible designs and a lot more.
If your visitors can’t figure out your company’s work within seconds after logging in to your website, the purpose doesn’t get fulfilled. If users cannot easily navigate the website, it will lead to a higher bounce rate. This should alert you that it is high time you start finding out things that are going wrong and begin setting them right in terms of optimizing them.
Why Do You Need Responsive Web Design?
Only a user-friendly website would make you stand out in the crowd. But, unfortunately, website developers and owners usually tend to overlook such little things that eventually make a significant difference to your business.
Source: xirainfotech.com
A successful website should be well planned in its strategy and content, have navigation for the ease of users, and should be SEO and mobile-friendly. Sometimes it is good to see how professionals use their digital strategies.
Any flaws in the website design or difficulty in navigation will eventually affect your otherwise supremely amazing content.
But this is not all; there are many things that go into building a website that does work like magic. It, of course, can be overwhelming to look at it all at once. So the following article will give you the best website designing tips and tricks on how to create a captivating website design.
Make The Strategy
There can be no responsive web design without a strategy first. To fix things right, you need to acknowledge that there is something wrong, and once that is done, half the job is done. And since you know that you need to make some amendments to your website, now is the time to take some steps backward and plan how to do this.
One thing that can be done is start tracing out the visitors’ journey until they become your customer. Notice the pages they are viewing on the content they are reading. This will help maximize your lead generation and increase your bounce rates.
Since researching is a difficult task, you can also opt to interview your customers if you don’t have sophisticated CRM software in place. You may also consider offering them something in return like a gift voucher or a coupon card in exchange for their time and effort. But, first, figure out the key points of your website with which the users interact the most.
You can then make the changes based on the feedback of your visitors, which will help you create even a better responsive web design.
With that said, hire the best in the business of website design services that have the very basics and the advanced knowledge of how to design a website.
Smooth Interaction
Responsive web designs make your interaction with your visitors smooth. Try focusing on the message you are going to convey and avoid using unnecessary content and stock images.
Since the attention span of a normal human being is just eight seconds, you need to ensure that your message is abundantly clear as well as the design of your website is not distracting. This ranges from the color of your website, your font style, your icons, and logos, etc. Confusing colors and font styles may mess up your conversion rates.
Your responsive web design should be designed in such a way that visitors know what they are supposed to focus on. So draw their attention to the focus point. And leave other things as secondary.
Spacing also plays an important role in the same. Even the width or length of some of the icons impact the content and may shift the visitor’s focus.
Also, talking about the font, it is generally suggested to use only one type of font in different ways: bold, italic, or in different sizes. This will put together the look nicely and will also look decent.
And keep in mind that your images don’t overpower the content written on them. Both the image and the text should be clearly visible because that appeals to the visitors.
Add Social Proof
Responsive web design imbibes trust in its visitors.
While shopping online, most people have a biased opinion of the same product based on their ratings, reviews, and past experiences. This urges the customer to buy what’s offered as it helps gain their trust.
The same goes for all other websites too. The genuine and impactful testimonials from the users do influence other visitors. A study shows that testimonials increase your purchase rate by 58%.
Source: wyzowl.com
Now it shouldn’t be that your testimonials are just lying around here and there. So, first of all, choose a way of their design such as whether they will be in text form or video form.
According to the studies, video testimonials have become the best because they automatically hold the visitor’s attention far better than a text will ever. Seeing people and listening to them also builds a stronger connection.
However, the text also has its own merits if designed and put up properly in a good manner. Try to make the testimonials look as genuine as possible. Including photos and names of the company, reviews, etc., would make a much more legit impression. Avoid writing just the review and the name as it looks fake.
If you are putting up video testimonials, it would be better to write a brief description of what the video talks about so the visitor knows exactly what to expect.
Here is an example of how a video testimonial looks like:
If video is not something you can afford, you may probably want to have a separate page for the case studies to talk about the things you did in the past to make your customers trust you.
Also, real images would make more sense to the viewers than stock images.
Also, consider adding up some filters on your page for the ease of the visitors to find the information or product relevant to their needs.
Add Call-To-Action Buttons
Responsive web designs have exceptionally designed CTAs. When a visitor is on your website for any reason, try drawing their attention to the place where conversion will happen, i.e., call-to-action buttons.
Examples of different types of CTA:
Source: keepitusable.com
If your website does not guide them the way, maybe someone else will because no visitor would want to look up and make an effort. It’s you who need to make their work easy.
The well-placed call-to-action buttons would help improve your web design by 10 times. Just show the CTA buttons to the users wherever they go on the site.
Also, the CTA buttons that you put up should be of the visitors’ use and should complement each other. For example, if someone is there to educate themselves, probably the “contact us” button would not evoke them taking some action as compared to some other button that complements their need. Instead, you may consider something like “Learn More” or “Start Reading” or something along the same lines with more specific details.
This will also improve your image in their eyes as they will start seeing you as a thought leader, which in turn would improve your business.
Localize The Landing Page
More than half of your lead generation can be done only by one simple step– localizing your landing page. So why not do that?
A Google search says that 18% of the local searches turned into conversions in a day against 7% of non-local ones.
It is also far easier to rank up on a local SEO as against a regular one because of the lesser competition and wider audience.
One thing that can be done is determine the location of your visitors and translate the content accordingly because people connect better in their language. However, merely translating the content word to word would not suffice the purpose.
Since Google is now more focused on satisfying the user’s search intent, it doesn’t show irrelevant information based on the search. This is why localized landing pages are the hype. So it’s better to do it right away.
Avoid Cliche Stock Images
Original photos are always preferred over stock images, but if you don’t have access to them, you can go with stock images; however, be very mindful.
Stock images do save you a lot of time, but they also sometimes end up looking cliche. In addition, some other websites may also be using the same picture, which will question your reliability. This declines the trust that you have with your user and causes hindrance in the process of conversion.
So maintain your distance from those cheesy pictures that you come across all over the internet. Try keeping them as real and unique as possible, so they look genuine. Don’t put the pictures of those over-excited fellas that don’t make any sense. Just keep it real.
Look for the pictures that show realistic scenarios and not the ones with people jumping in the air or dressed as superheroes because obviously, it doesn’t happen in real life. Does it?
Add candid images rather than the studio ones as they look more genuine.
Once you’ve selected your picture, check how many people are using it (using software like TinEye). If you get a number in thousand or anything near that, you probably would want to rethink before using that picture.
Use a picture that shows who you are and what your content is all about. And if you can use original photographed pictures, then there’s nothing better than that. Also, please avoid this guy; chances are your competitor’s website would have his image too.
Apart from this, localizing your images is also a good option. Since visitors tend to pay attention to the images more than what’s written on the page, that replaces your stock images with more local images. With a little touch of local culture, you can make your customers believe that you care about them.
Design Mobile-friendly website
Source: developers.google.com
A study has shown that 80% of internet searches are done on a smartphone. So if your website is compatible with only desktop or laptop, that is not going to help. The website must be mobile-friendly as well. You otherwise would be losing out on more than half of your traffic.
However, this does not mean that the desktop is any less important in this case because 83% of the mobile users want to be able to continue searching on their desktops.
Consider your website’s load time in mobiles as people rarely have time to look at the blank screen or the buffering sign.
Ask yourself questions and answer them with the steps that you take in that regard. Then, think about why somebody would probably visit your site on their mobile.
And if your website is similar for mobile as well as desktop, there’s nothing better than that. Try creating a seamless experience for mobile users.
The designing of a responsive web design must start from the smallest view. So, create a mobile layout of a basic website design first and then go to the desktop layout.
If you intend to take a mobile-friendly test, you may do so by clicking here.
Media queries
A responsive website is not just about optimizing the website layout for various screens; you need more– media queries that will do that for you. Because when the layout is too small, it starts to break and create columns too small to display the content. So, this is when media queries come into play.
Ethan Marcotte says that a media query allows us to target certain devices and look for the device’s features that render the work.
It lets the web designers make condition checks such that it adjusts web design according to the user’s device. It also helps to specify the different styles for one individual web browser and the device’s properties.
Content on desktop vs. smartphone
You need to consider three main things while optimizing your website for mobile phones and creating a responsive web design.
- Since there is no cursor in the phone, there can’t be an on-hover state as it is a touchscreen.
- The size of interactive elements needs to be increased, and more whitespace needs to be added between the content.
- Consider using a hamburger menu for mobile navigation. This menu is the best for mobiles as it complements the vertical screen orientation of the phone.
Screen resolutions
Screen resolution is another important element to consider while designing responsive web design. Mobile, tablet, desktop, etc., all have a large number of users operating on them. So the website designer must keep in mind all the screen resolutions while designing the website.
Source: resources.snydergroupinc.com
Screen resolutions for different devices:
- Large desktop = 1920 x 1080
- Average desktop = 1440 x 900
- Average laptop = 1366 x 768
- Large mobile = 720 x 1280
- Average mobile = 375 x 667
- Small mobile = 360 x 640
One more thing that the designer should be mindful of is the screens that are not yet popular as much but will be soon, so their UX must be future-proof to ensure that it works well even with the coming devices.
Since the web pages show up differently in different web browsers, the websites must be tried and tested to ensure that they are compatible with a variety of them.
So the website designer must consider all the browsers and their share in the market worldwide, which is as follows:
- Chrome: 55.04%
- Safari: 14.86%
- UC Browser: 8.69%
- Firefox: 5.72%
- Opera: 4.03%
- Internet Explorer: 3.35%
Keeping these resolutions in mind shall help you create a better responsive web design.
Optimize Images And Videos
Be smart with your images and videos when it comes to making responsive web designs.
Try avoiding large size media. The images of large size take time to load because the web browser has to resize them to fit in the viewport. Instead, use software like Squoosh to resize your pictures.
While you optimize the images for small screens, do not just change the size but also consider cropping some of them to avoid losing the impact.
Provide Site Navigation
Providing site navigation is of imperative importance in creating responsive web design.
For people visiting your website for the first time, or for those who are not very well versed with things like such, you should set up navigation to guide them to the places where you want them to go, or they need to go like your blog, products, services, etc.
A poorly organized navigation will upset the visitors and lessen your chances of conversion. On the other hand, if you will ease out the work for your visitors, only then will you be able to increase your business.
If you don’t provide them with what they are looking for, they will just leave and go to some other site that offers. They then have no reason to stay on your page.
A well-mannered and organized navigation will let your user be at ease while surfing, which ensures that they spend more time on your website, increasing your conversion.
Write SEO-friendly Content
If you have supremely amazing content, but it is not ranking on the internet, it is not reaching people, then what’s the whole point, right? Use keywords that are trending.
Your content should be optimized as per the language that your target audience is using commonly.
Because picture this, you are targeting people from the UAE and are ranking for English language and not Arabic. So you also don’t need pseudo-SEOing. Know your audience and work accordingly.
Source: webdew.com
Focus on multilingual SEO while translating. For example, if you have written English content, you have used English SEO. Still, if your audience is mostly non-English speakers, you need to switch your language too, which will eventually demand SEO changes.
Therefore to create a responsive web design, you don’t need to focus only on resolutions but also on the website language.
Choose The Right Hosting Solution
Regardless of the tweaks, you make to your website, most of its performance boils down to the quality of the servers being used.
Various hosting packages offer a wide range of benefits with complex cost structures. So it is very important to spend some time researching the web hosting packages and making sure that you get the best value for your money. This way, you can achieve the optimum performance expected by your users.
Looking at what your competitors are doing is always a good option to go for, just for your growth and not with any other negative intention. See which websites of different niches work fast and check their hosting provider.
Do Not Compromise
If you want to better the performance of your website, do not provide it in diluted form. For mobile, you may also add features like offline support. Keep it as simple as possible for the ease of the users.
Avoid the following thing to create a responsive web design:
- Disable zooming
- Use browser sniffing
- Hide content
Do Experiment
With such a fast pacing world, there is no room for stagnancy. This is applicable for websites as well. Only a growing and up-to-date website with a responsive web design will grow further and have less bouncing rate and more conversions.
Knowing the scenario of tech and stuff in India, a new thing comes into existence every day, and your website must be ready for the same to reach more numbers. You would not know which software or browser or anything your user is operating on, so you need to be up for all of them.
Look for any design updates and see if and how they will affect the performance of your website. And these don’t need to be very drastic changes. It could be something as little as the color of your buttons, headers, some slight hint change, etc.
It does sound like a lot, but the result it yields is worth all the effort. So experiment and see what works out for you and what doesn’t. Then, be open to critical feedback and work your way out.
Hire The Professionals
Creating responsive web design is not a DIY task. Attracting more traffic for lead generation and conversions is still easier as compared to keeping that traffic on the site. This is where you need professional help to keep them on the site and also to have them coming back.
To improve your responsive web design, work with the best web designing agency to make sure that your website turns out to be as you want.
In addition to that, if you want to get a b2b website designed that focuses on streamlining the content and has effective navigation, you may want to hire a b2b web design agency that does the job.
Conclusion:
To allow a more flexible layout, incorporate responsive web design for your website. It creates an equal user experience on all devices and screens.
Sure, all the information and points mentioned above are overwhelming, but they do yield magical results and get you ahead of your competitors when it comes to performance.
All these tips and tricks will dramatically change the performance and look of your website, even if you follow only some of them. Though, we would suggest you follow them all.
