Are you capturing all the traffic you can with your website design? With over 50% of internet traffic coming through mobile devices like tablets and smartphones, your website needs a mobile-responsive design.

If you fail to optimize your site for mobile, it means that Google will punish you in search. Without a responsive design, search engines will penalise your pages which will result in a bad search ranking and less website traffic.

A responsive web design not only caters to mobile users but to desktop clients as well. However, it would help if you had blazing-fast response times for your site and pages. Research shows that most users will not wait more than three seconds for a site to load before they bounce back to the search results.

This post looks at ways for you to optimize your website responsiveness for mobile and desktop devices. We’ll unpack the following four ways to improve the speed and responsiveness of your site.

  • Resize Browsers with Meta Viewport Tags
  • Resize content to Mobile Viewing
  • Implement CSS Media for Responsive Viewing
  • Select the Right Breakpoints

Resize Browsers with Meta Viewport Tags

This simple strategy goes a long way in improving your website responsiveness. In the HTML header, enter the following meta tag:

<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1″>

This viewport meta tag allows browsers to scale the page to the size requested by any device. Without this tag, the device scales the page design by itself to a preset configuration.

As a result, the webpage looks different from what you expect.

Resize content to Mobile Viewing

For optimal mobile user experiences, you’ll need to eliminate horizontal scrolling. Users find it frustrating to “pinch-and-zoom” around web pages, and they’ll bounce from your site.

To resize your content to a mobile experience, make sure you’re using relative widths. Avoid using fixed widths as page design elements, as the content may render outside of the browser. It’s also critical to ensure you’re not using absolute positioning for large content or site elements.

Absolute positioning doesn’t accommodate the browser’s screen, and there’s a possibility that your site breaks when the user attempts to scroll around the screen.

Pinching and zooming with this configuration may also result in site breaks and other developer problems.

Implement CSS Media for Responsive Viewing

The media query is merely a filter for your site’s CSS code. When resizing the screen or viewing content on various tablet screen sizes, the web content renders differently for each screen size.

By implementing media queries, you control the look and sizing of DOM factors and elements on different screen orientations and sizes. With this strategy, your content renders responsively across all devices.

To use the CSS media query, contain all CSS styles you need inside your set’s sizing rules. If the screen reaches a > 600px, you’ll see the #container disappears. No CSS styles will apply if the user’s screen size is over 600px.

Admins can set screen size filters at “max-width” as part of the “Media Feature.” The media feature helps the CSS follow the rules you set for the screen width. The most common four types of media features include the following.

  • minimum-width
  • maximum-width
  • minimum-height
  • maximum-height

Using the media features, you can specify the look of your HTML at any size. However, the most critical component of using the CSS media feature is selecting the right breakpoints.

Select the Right Breakpoints

How do you figure out the right breakpoints to set on your web pages for the best design responsiveness? Enveloping your cases ensures as many devices as possible can access the page elements.

There are several ways to select the breakpoints for your web pages. Most web admins choose to start with the smallest device and expand into the larger devices after setting the foundation. This strategy, also known as “mobile-first design,” is critical to the success of your site in drawing traffic.

With a mobile-first design of your web pages, you get a responsive site and web pages that scale to any device or screen size. All you need to do is implement adjustments to ensure the maximum usability of your site and web pages on any mobile or desktop device.

Essentially, this strategy helps you future-proof your site for the event when mobile tech becomes the leader in website navigation and web access.

Here is a quick strategy template for initiating mobile-first design on your website and pages.

  • Design the site content to fit the smallest screen size first.
  • Gradually expand the screen size.
  • Insert breakpoints when you notice the white space appearing.
  • Use the new breakpoint to adjust your layout.
  • Adjust your margins or paddings and increase your font size to give the page a native look.
  • Rearrange your site components for a cleaner look.

Top Developer Tips

  • Make use of the Chrome Developer toolkit to visualize your site content on various screen sizes.
  • Run Google PageSpeed to assess the speed and efficacy of your site.
  • Optimize all text on the site for easy reading and keep your text lines to eight to ten words.

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