Having a mobile friendly is a must for all website owners. The comes from the use of mobile phones, which indicates that more and more people prefer to access the Internet through this type of device.
For this reason, Google has changed to the , giving priority to mobile-optimized websites when it comes to positioning pages. That is, if you want to anticipate the competition and, you have to make your website have a responsive web design.
In this article, we will share some useful tips on how to make a responsive website and explain why it is essential to be so.
10 tips to have a responsive website
Making your site have a responsive web design requires a bit of technical knowledge, but we’ll walk you through it. Here are several ways to make a website mobile-friendly:
1. Start with a mobile-centric approach
The “mobile-first” approach is the practice of developing and designing for mobile devices and then moving to desktop.
Some developers and designers work for desktop first and then scale back the design for mobile. However, now that mobile-first indexing exists, reversing this workflow will help you optimize your design from the start.
2. Move your site from desktop to mobile
In case you already have a fully functional desktop site that has not yet been optimized for mobile use, the first thing you should do is convert it to a mobile version.
There are two methods to do this: using a website builder or CMS plugins.
Convert your desktop site with a website builder
If you choose to create a new site for mobile users, use a website builder to recreate the desktop layout easily and without programming. Please note that it is not possible to import your website files from another platform, but you can get close to its original design.
They offer an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that saves you time and resources when developing a mobile-friendly website.
They also offer responsive templates that automatically adapt to whatever device your visitors use, so you don’t have to redesign from scratch.
Some of the most popular website builders are Shopify, wix Y zyro.
Subscription plans range from 2.49 Y €15.90 per month. Its advanced features include e-commerce features such as order and inventory management and tools such as a AI Content Generator for your website.
Plus, it offers mobile optimization and fast loading speed right out of the box.
Convert your desktop site using a CMS plugin
Today’s CMS themes are already designed to be responsive. However, if your theme is not yet mobile-ready, it’s best to use a plugin.
For WordPress users, it helps transform the look and feel of your mobile WordPress site. Include or exclude specific pages for your mobile site, and you can even specify a different home page for it.
At , you can convert or adapt your desktop site to a mobile-friendly site in a few steps.
If you use Joomla, convert your site with . Its features include responsive image resizing and optimization, which is great for speeding up your site.
3. Use a responsive theme
Using a responsive theme is a simple and convenient option that beginners or non-technical users can use to create a mobile-friendly website. By installing this type of theme, your website will automatically adapt to any device.
If you are just starting to create a website, using a responsive theme will make it mobile-friendly from the start. However, if you already have an established desktop website, make sure before you switch themes.
Check that it is possible to restore the previous version of the site in case any changes cause a crash.
Almost all CMS themes and website builder templates come with responsive web design, so you will have plenty of options to choose from.
If you still can’t find one that suits your needs and preferences, third-party theme marketplaces also offer plenty of options.
Read and visit sites that use the desired theme from a mobile device. This way you can check the user experience and the performance of the theme.
Since speed is one of the most important factors of a responsive web design, use it for the theme.
For example, we are going to use one of the most popular responsive WordPress themes on the market, . We will use the live demo of Avada-Festival for this quiz.
Enter the URL of the demo in Pingdom and choose the test location. It is possible to test the performance of your site in any region of the world. Click the button Start Test.
The test will show the degree of performance of the website, the size of the page, the loading time and the number of requests. It will also give some suggestions on how to improve speed.
It helps you to assess the speed of the theme, whether it is lightweight and what you can do to improve its speed, making it more compatible with mobile devices.
4. Don’t use Flash
Adobe stopped developing Flash on December 30, 2020, which means that none of the major browsers, such as Google Chrome, Safari either MozillaFirefoxbear it.
Now most of the Flash based content has been upgraded to modern standards like and WebGL.
5. Optimize your site speed
Web hosting and server quality greatly influence the performance of your website. Choose one for your website to run at optimum speed.
For best performance, we recommend using a or a . These offer the best server response speed, a crucial aspect for the performance of your site.
Another aspect that you should take into account when optimizing the speed of your site is the number of content pages that require an additional plugin to work. This especially applies to the home page.
Here are some tips to make sure your home page isn’t slowing down your website:
- Limit the number of articles on the home page to about 5-10 posts.
- Remove unnecessary or unused widgets.
- Remove inactive or irrelevant plugins.
6. Pay attention to the appearance of your site
While content is the main reason people visit your website, it has a significant impact on your bounce rate. Therefore, it is important to make a good impression from the beginning.
To check the degree of compatibility of your site with mobile devices, use the Google tool. Only the URL of your site is needed to perform the test.
This tool will give you a detailed analysis of your website. It will display your site on various mobile devices and comment whether it is mobile friendly or not.
It will also recommend various actions to improve the performance of your website.
7. Enable Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
(AMP) is a framework that aims to speed up the loading process of your website on mobile.
Restricts HTML/CSS and , compressing site data to eight times smaller than a normal mobile web page. This makes charging processes up to four times faster.
The following are some of the other benefits of using AMP.
Speed up site load time on mobile devices
More than will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Luckily, AMP speeds up your site so you don’t lose out on that valuable organic traffic.
AMP itself is not an SEO ranking factor, but speed is. This is why AMP pages tend to rank better in the SERPs.
Use the Google AMP cache to improve the performance of your server
Google AMP Cache is a proxy-based (CDN) used to facilitate the process of transferring valid AMP documents to users.
In other words, Google AMP Cache will save your site’s data, allowing it to load faster and be more mobile-friendly.
Here are some features of Google AMP Cache that can improve the performance of your server:
- Save image and font data.
- Automatically limits the maximum dimensions of the image.
- Image formats are converted to WebP to make them easier to use on mobile.
- Lower the quality of images to speed up the loading process without affecting their appearance.
- It uses secure HTTP channels and the latest web protocol technology such as SPDY and HTTP/2.
Activating AMP depends on the CMS you use. If your website runs on WordPress, use it to generate AMP versions of your pages automatically.
If your site is not based on WordPress, or .
8. Use Media Queries
Media Queries are used to present a style sheet adapted to different devices. They ask the device how big it is, and then direct the browser to display a web page based on the set you’ve set.
They are a crucial part of a mobile site, as they allow your site to automatically adapt to different screen sizes.
This is an example of a media query in a CSS file:
} /* On screens 640px wide or less, use two columns instead of four */ @media screen and (max-width: 640px) { .column { width: 50%; }
In the example above, the code will only apply to screens 640 pixels wide or less, changing the column layout to fit better.
Make sure to set your media queries for all device sizes, not just the most popular types.
Visual testing tools like can help you test your site on over 2,000 browsers and mobile devices.
9. Use standard fonts
Standard ones like and are easy to read, even on the smallest mobile phone screens.
On the other hand, custom and creative fonts such as can make your site more visually appealing, but are difficult to read if you use them in the body of the content.
Furthermore, it could lead your site visitors to download new fonts on their phones, hurting the user experience and causing them to leave immediately.
Also take into account the font size: the ideal size of the body of the main text on a mobile site is 16 pixels. Secondary and tertiary text, such as captions and labels, can be 2 pixels smaller than the body of the text.
Different fonts can be more or less readable at the same size, so always test them by reading the text on a real mobile device.
10. Optimize images
When it comes to mobile sites, the…
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