Designing a web in the past was very easy because you only had to design it for one device, the desktop computer. Today, with the great advancement of new technologies and devices, web designing has become tougher as compared to the past. With the increased use of smartphones and televisions, with small and wide screens, developing a website has now become an increasingly difficult task for the web developer.

Responsive Web Design is an easy and effective way to use the benefits of every pixel of useful display property, without switching the mobile layout. For instance, if you pick up the area of your browser and gradually reduce the size of display, you will see the website accommodating the new quality because it was made on a responsive structure that adds and erases content as required. If you use a cell phone or tablet pc, the website will click to the best structure possible for your device. This is very effective because it makes a website very useful, and no cruising or panning is required to study the content or get around the web pages.

Without Responsive Web Design, several turned off editions of the same website have to be designed and toggled by hand or using complex display quality and system recognition programs. This exponentially increases designing costs, and updating the website becomes a major difficulty for web developers.

How Responsive Web Design Works

The best part of Responsive Web Design is that it is a technology-light remedy. It depends on a function of CSS known as “media query” that permits you to select different style sheet features with respect to the screen size that is detected and the orientation of device on which the web page is being considered. For example, you may want your web page to have three columns of the content for viewing it on the desktop. But that would probably be very hard to read on a smartphone. With the help of media query function, you can easily change to different style sheets or call a number of features within one style sheet to your content into just one large column by knowing the dimension of the screen.

Benefits of Responsive Web Design

Responsive Web Design has many benefits that are spreading its use over the online world very quickly. Some of the benefits of Responsive Web Design are as follows:

• It Saves Money: Before the wide use of Responsive Web Design, website designers and owners had to develop many versions for a single website because of different screen resolutions of different devices. This is expensive. If some companies spend their money making different versions of a single website for the leading devices like iPhone, iPad and android phones, then what would happen when new devices come onto the market?

  That is the beauty and perfection of Responsive Web Design; it allows your site to display all of its features on any size screen, from the wide screens of televisions to the tiniest smartphones. Now, you just have to design your website once, which will definitely reduce costs and save you money.

• It Saves Time: The reality is that the fact that you have to design and develop your website one time only will also save you time and energy. This consequently results in fewer events, less work, and less stress knowing that you don’t have to repeat this procedure if a new system comes on the market.

• It Beats Your Competitors: As many web designers do not know much about Responsive Web Design, you can benefit from it. Make a lot of changes and transformations on your website to fit all types of screens in order to gain more traffic. In this way, many visitors will like and visit your website more than the websites of your competitors.

• Your Website Will Last Longer: By using Responsive Web Design, the life of your website will increase, and people will keep visiting it for a longer time because it will be convenient for them to get needed information with any type of device they have.

• Increases Conversions: When people come to your website, they will definitely appreciate changes and modifications if you give them a good experience. It means that you have to give them everything they want and with the use of Responsive Web Design, you can easily make conversions on your site to give visitors a better and easier experience.

• It Gives You Freedom: With all of the benefits mentioned above, you will experience less stress, knowing that your site is working optimally on all types of devices.

Useful Tips

Following are some tips that can help you design a Responsive Web Design effectively:

• Wireframe: Before making any markups, wireframe your small screen and desktop, as this will give you all the information you need about where and in what order your HTML will need to gain the correct position of your site on small screens and larger desktops. If your website needs editing, then you can easily add and remove elements with the help of JavaScript. You have to be sure that you have put in enough navigation to get to to every page of your site.

• Make Full Use of Relative-Absolute and Position-Absolute: You may want a specific logo on the menu and below it. You can move your HTML markup or reposition it with the help of JavaScript. It is a very beneficial way to redesign your markup visually.

• Use of Fluid Layouts: Making use of the percentages in your markup is called flexible layout and fluid layout. Try to use percentage margins in your website. It is very helpful in making a Responsive Web Design.

• Placing Selective and Important Content for a Small Screen: If your site is informative, then your main aim is to inform people Try to focus on the information provided for researches only.

• Make the Buttons Large: If your website has may things that a majority of people use to click on, then add huge buttons on your site, which makes it convenient for people who click on small screen devices. Avoid the “fat finger” syndrome by making the action convenient enough for fingers.

• Scaling Media: Don’t forget to scale media such as images, videos, and embedded objects. Try to put them on a max width of approximately 100%. For this purpose you should know the CSS elastic video process or you can also do it through JavaScript.

• Selection of Media Format: In this modern era, you can simply achieve this goal by using video distributing software and services that will automatically change to video formats suitable for your site.

• Use of Appropriate Size Image: If you are about to use JavaScript, then you have to check the width of the browser and choose the most appropriate size image for the desktops and the small screens. You have to request smaller images that allow the user to download it fast enough through small screens.

• The Process: Any type of project, whether big or small, has a process. The Responsive Web Design process is a little tricky, but by reading and following the instructions of the process below, you will definitely get a lot of help. Following are some of the important items such as development, design, discovery, and deployment that are included in the Responsive Web Design process.

• Good Start: If you are getting help from a web design company then you should meet with them and discuss all the things that are to be included in your website. If you are designing a web yourself, then collect all the necessary researches and all the paper work needed to start your Responsive Web Design. A good start is very helpful in completing the whole process. Keep one thing in mind; you must be aware of all the tricks and tips in order to perform this task yourself. Otherwise hire a team that could do this for your website.

• Analyze the Project: Determine all the requirements of your project, from a creative, technical, and organizational point of view. Analyze everything, including, the visual design of your site, writing style, and interface design, and have a complete understanding of the main purpose of your website. Plan everything, from where your website is now and what it will be in the future, and then plan it accordingly This is a very effective part of the process.

• Content Strategy: Depending on certain conditions, you can make changes and amendments in the content of your website qualitatively and also quantitatively. Make a site map for your site, because it is very important and it helps users to find what they want from your website. Always be concerned about the requirements of users, and keep in touch with them to understand their needs and demands. Remember, your customers’ needs must be your first priority; this is the reason why you are making your design responsive¬–to provide them ease in their search from any device conveniently and without any difficulties.

• Search Tactics: Develop a responsive site that fulfills all the needs of Search Engine Optimization to make your site appear on the top of search engine pages. This will bring more visitors to your site. Content should include items like URL syntax, content hierarchy, structure of your page, screen resolutions for big and small screens, and media data. Make sure that your responsive design is beneficial for search engines, your audience, and yourself.

• Compiling Information: Compile all the information you have gained through your research into an abridged content. This content should cover the outlines of content, search, and creative, as well as technical strategies. This content will work as a map for your whole project, which will keep you updated about everything on your website.

• UX Sketches: Make difficult wireframes, or UX blueprints, for key opinions. This will help in designing the style of the program, while creating a sense of performance.

• Web Page Tables: One of your main objectives is to keep the content separate from style or demonstration. Your material should never be reliant on a structure to work effectively. So, along with the wireframes, you will obtain a complete set of page platforms for key web pages. These page tablets recognize each content location in order, and recognize the most important information to connect in each area.

• Interaction Style and Design: Once you have made all the outlines, then you can easily wireframe the remaining views by using benefits from the feature list and page tablets. Every view strategy will be done to make all the features you have planned to visualize. This makes it convenient for both small and large screens.

• Visual Designing: After wireframing your website, your next approach is to attract people. This can be done by working on the visual state of your website. You should take care of the writing format, color palettes, branding elements, and a lot more. This will give your website a great look. The better your website looks in big and small screens, the more traffic you gain to increase your site rating.

• Style Guide: Make a style guide that is easy to implement. This guide will demonstrate the personality and design of the system.

• HTML or Theme Build: After doing the visual designing, it’s time for you to build JavaScript, HTML or CSS themes. For good outputs, make sure that all the work is done by the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) that forces the browsers to display the websites and web pages the designer wants to show. You can also use JavaScript instead of other software for the interactive elements of your site.

• Cross-Browser: This is the place where you can test whether your page templates are working well for the desktops and browsers like Blackberry, iDevices, androids, etc. You should make your website so versatile that it will run on any device according to its specifications and screen sizes. If your website works on all devices, then your website will be successful.

• Writing Content for Your Website: A website without content in it is considered junk. Write content for the publicity of your website and for the ease of users. You can also hire online content writers who will understand the theme of your website and will write useful and meaningful content according to your needs.

• User Acceptance Testing (UAT): UAT helps you to confirm that your newly edited website meets all the requirements and objectives that are mentioned above, because you need time to know whether everything is working well in your website. Similarly, if the users have some problems with your website, then you can overcome them easily by making edits and adjustments according to their needs.

• Launching Plan and Publishing: After making the amendments with your current website, launch your plan and release your newly edited website to the Internet. Don’t forget to use the quality checklist as this will tell you whether your website is meeting the requirements or not. Take care of the fact that your new website is handled by appropriate search engines because a website that does not appear in the search engines does not have any value.

• Updating: Your website is something that continuously grows and changes its face throughout its life. So, you have to update it regularly to make your website user friendly for a long-term basis.