Responsive web design is an approach that focuses on creating a single design that responds to the user’s environment, such as screen size and device. Despite the importance of having a responsive website, there are certain mistakes you should avoid. In this article, we explore 8 of these mistakes and how you can avoid them:
Download your FREE web design mistakes guide and skyrocket your business today!
Why is a responsive web design important?
Responsive web design plays a crucial role in modern web development to ensure websites deliver a seamless user experience across all devices.
With mobile devices now accounting for the majority of website traffic, websites that fail to adapt to different devices risk losing a significant portion of their audience. Opting for a responsive design ensures web content automatically adjusts and reforms based on the screen size and resolution.
Such flexibility increases the usability of a website, allowing users to read content, navigate menus, and interact much more easily regardless of their device or screen size. Not implementing a responsive design can have adverse effects, resulting in higher bounce rates, lower engagement, and lost business.
The biggest reason why responsive web design is important for businesses is that it can boost conversion rates. A mobile-friendly layout improves user experience and reduces friction throughout the user journey, whether the goal is to make a purchase, fill out a form, or read an article.
Responsive websites can also benefit SEO, as search engines now prioritise mobile-first indexing. Ensuring a well-designed and mobile-optimised site is more likely to rank higher in search results, increasing visibility and traffic.
Another good reason why responsive web design is important is that it helps simplify the maintenance of a website. Instead of creating and updating separate versions of a website for desktop and mobile, you work with one website for all. This approach saves time, reduces costs, and ensures consistency in branding and functionality.
What are the responsive web design mistakes you should avoid?
Given how important responsive web design is, it’s only natural that you would want your business to benefit. However, several mistakes should be avoided to ensure the best user experience. Here are 8 responsive web design mistakes to avoid:
1 Ignoring mobile / focusing on desktop
The first responsive web design mistake to avoid is ignoring mobile devices or solely focusing on desktop. One of the biggest issues when developing a responsive design is either designing for desktop first or not considering mobile during the design and testing process.
Very often, this results in a website that appears cluttered or difficult to view on mobile. Common problems with this tend to be design elements that are too close together, buttons that are difficult to press, or text that is too small to read, heavily impacting the user experience.
To prevent this problem, consider starting your web design with a mobile-first approach. This is where you design the website for a mobile device first and then scale up afterwards.
2 Ignoring touch compatibility
One of the biggest issues users face when browsing a website on mobile is difficulty with touch inputs. Whether this is buttons, links, or navigational menus, ignoring touch compatibility on mobile makes it very difficult to ensure a positive user experience.
This is commonly the result of buttons that are placed too close to each other, links that are too small to click with your finger, or touchpoints that are placed in difficult places out of a thumb’s reach. This makes it difficult for users to interact, engage, and accurately tap where they want.
There are a few tips you can follow to ensure touch compatibility with your responsive web design. The first is to add touch feedback. This often entails setting a button or link to a different colour once the user has clicked it to let them know they’ve completed the action.
Also, ensure touch targets are a big enough size and placed within a suitable proximity to where a user’s thumb will be using the touchscreen. Adding padding around touch targets also ensures sufficient space around the element for improved usability.
3 Lack of whitespace
A lack of whitespace is another responsive web design mistake you should avoid. Whitespace refers to any negative space on a page that isn’t filled with any design elements. Typically, this helps to balance a page’s design and improve readability and aesthetics.
On mobile, it can be very tempting to overcrowd a page as a way to cram as much in as possible. However, this only has negative impacts on the end user, making it difficult to properly digest content or overwhelming users.
While there is no set guideline on how much whitespace is good, finding the balance is crucial for improving your responsive website’s user experience. Too little whitespace results in a busy and disjointed website. Too much and it can look unbalanced or detached. However, a good guideline is that less than 50% of your page consists of whitespace.
4 Difficult or unclear navigation
Difficult or unclear navigation is another responsive web design mistake to avoid. Different devices and screen sizes will require different navigation. For example, navigation on mobile will need to be much simpler compared to desktop.
However, it’s important that you keep your navigation consistent to avoid confusion. The best way to ensure a simplified navigation that can be used effectively on mobile is a hamburger menu. This is a simple yet effect UX design tip that can improve navigation on mobile devices.
It’s a simple icon made up of three horizontal lines closely resembling the structure of a hamburger. When clicked on, it allows a user to access a side or dropdown menu with navigation links that would otherwise take up valuable screen space.
5 Slow load speeds
One of the biggest factors affecting whether users stay on your site is load speeds. The longer a site takes to load, the more likely they are to leave. Not only does this impact your SEO, but it also results in the loss of valuable business due to a poor experience.
It’s estimated that around 60% of users will not return to a website that didn’t provide a seamless experience. There can be several reasons that result in slow load speeds, including:
- Poor server performance
- Lack of caching of gzip compression
- Using outdated code or plugins
- Resource-intensive plug-ins
- Images not optimised
- Large media files
Reducing load speeds on your website for both mobile and desktop is crucial to ensure users stay on your site and create a positive user experience. Implementing lazy loading is one of the most popular options for improving your website speed, where content on a page doesn’t load until it’s nearly in view.
6 Low-quality or poorly optimised images
Following on from the last mistake, low-quality or poorly optimised images are another responsive web design you should avoid. It’s vital to ensure that images display with sufficient quality, whatever the screen size. This includes images that are upscaled for larger screens.
However, filling your pages full of large image files only negatively impacts load speeds. This is where effective image optimisation can be vital. Reducing the file size while still retaining quality ensures images look good on all devices without impacting quality significantly.
7 Overlooking the viewport meta tag
Another responsive web design mistake to avoid is overlooking the viewport meta tag. Viewport refers to the visible area of a webpage. This tag is used to determine the page dimensions and scaling used when a browser renders a page.
This is usually added with a line of code:
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0″ />
However, failing to include the viewport meta tag results in the design of a page not properly scaling on mobile. As such, there is no responsive scaling on different devices. To avoid this issue, always include the viewport meta tag.
8 Not testing on multiple devices
The last responsive web design mistake to avoid is not testing on multiple devices. This can either involve not properly testing your website on real devices or not testing it on multiple devices. Many times, people will often use simulations to test which don’t fully replicate the device or browser its simulating.
In some cases, there may be significant issues with how a page loads or how content appears that may not be apparent through simulations. Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure you test on real devices, and use multiple devices, including desktop, tablet, and mobile.
Ensuring a responsive web design is a crucial factor for ensuring a positive user experience that will keep users engaged and boost conversions. Avoiding the responsive web design mistakes above ensures there are no setbacks or difficulties for users across all devices. Not providing a responsive web design is just one of the many web design mistakes to avoid if you want to skyrocket your business.
Download your FREE web design mistakes guide and skyrocket your business today!