Nowadays, people freely switch from their phone to their computer to their tablet. (Then back to their phone shortly after).
And so, if you have a website—whether that be a business website, a personal blog, or whatever may have you—its cross-platform compatibility should be a top priority.
As you may already know, the whole concept underpinning cross-platform compatibility is referred to as responsive design.
In this article, we’ll go through the 8 main strategies for achieving responsive design—and thus an engaging (and profitable) website.
Understanding Responsive Design
In concrete terms, responsive design is a web development approach that enables websites to resize their layout, content, and functionality automatically based on the user’s screen size and resolution.
Instead of having to create separate versions of a site, developers use things to ensure a consistent experience across different devices:
- Flexible grids;
- Fluid images;
- CSS media queries.
The end goal is to ensure that users don’t have to resize, pan, or scroll much when viewing or using the app or website.
Why is Responsive Design Important?
Simple. If you have a website, then you probably want people to see and use it. Responsive design is critical for a seamless and intuitive user experience.
Good user experience is, in turn, critical for engagement. After all, people will be turned off from browsing your products if scrolling through your website on mobile is a visual mess.
More specifically, reports say that 79% of users will be turned away if a website has poor navigability.
But not only does it make people stay on your website, but it also helps with appearing on search engines!
Key Strategies for Responsive Design
So, how do developers ensure responsive design? Here are the 8 main strategies.
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Mobile-First Approach
A mobile-first approach means that devs start designing for smaller screens (phones) first. Then, they progressively work their way up to larger screen sizes.
Why? Because mobile users are working with the by far the least amount of screen space (and often even slower internet connections).
It’s far easier to start with the constrictions of small screen spaces then simply scale them up to larger sizes. It can serve as the most basic foundation upon which to build.
What about starting the opposite way, from larger to smaller screens? This will likely force devs to compromise on a lot of things they had from the desktop version of their sites when making the mobile versions.
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Flexible Grid Layouts
Responsive design is practically impossible without a flexible grid system.
Grid-based layouts use relative units like percentages instead of fixed units like pixels. This allows content—from text to embedded media to graphical elements—to resize proportionally to each other.
CSS frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation provide pre-defined grid systems that simplify the creation of responsive websites.
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Fluid Images and Media
But resizing isn’t the only goal. Images and other media should be able to resize according to screen sizes without compromising on quality or loading speed.
Devs should use CSS properties like max-width: 100% so images can scale within their container without overflowing or distorting, leading to blurry photos.
Additionally, modern image formats like WebP, which was created by Google, offer better compression, quality, and loading times compared to traditional formats like JPEG and PNG.
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CSS Media Queries
Media queries are essential for a website to apply different styles based on the characteristics of the user’s device, such as screen width, resolution, and orientation.
For example:
@media (max-width: 768px) {
body {
font-size: 14px;
}
}
This commonly-used CSS rule ensures that text sizes adjust appropriately on smaller screens, improving readability and usability.
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Optimized Navigation
However, responsive design is not just about how a website looks—it’s also about how navigable it is.
On mobile, traditional desktop navigation menus will take up too much space. Users will need to scroll and pan endlessly to get to the option they need.
Implementing responsive navigation techniques on mobile involves website elements like:
- Collapsible menus;
- Hamburger icons;
- Off-canvas navigation.
These condense menu content, making them far more manageable for those on mobile.
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Performance Optimization
Things may resize well and be navigable, but do they perform—or respond—well? Do things load quickly? It’s called responsive design, after all.
Remember that mobile devices tend to have slower processors than computers and tablets. Mobile users also connect to the internet through wireless connections (through Wi-Fi or cellular data), which are slower than the wired connections computers can afford.
Some of the common techniques used to enhance performance and reduce loading times include minifying CSS and JavaScript files, as well as using Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
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Touch-Friendly Design
Another thing to remember is that modern mobile devices use touchscreens to interact with websites. It is vastly different from how desktop users who use a mouse and keyboard.
Because of this, any interactive element—buttons, links, media—should be large enough to be easily tapped without accidental clicks. Implementing other touch gestures like swipe navigation and pinch-to-zoom are also the norm for mobile websites.
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Cross-Browser Compatibility
Aside from cross-platform compatibility, cross-browser compatibility is also important, especially because some people use different browsers depending on the device they’re using.
Test your websites on different browsers for any inconsistencies. Then, resolve them using vendor-specific CSS properties or polyfills.
Testing and Validation
Of course, websites need to be tested on different devices and browsers after being designed. It’s almost certain that some things were missed or not implemented as optimally the first time around.
Tools like BrowserStack and Responsinator allow devs to test their site on various devices and screen sizes before publishing.
Some even use VPN software for Windows to see how the website performs in different parts of the world. After all, different countries can have different technological norms.
Conclusion
Responsive design is now a non-negotiable in today’s mobile-dominated world. Virtually everything you could do on a desktop or laptop, you can now do on a phone.
If you want your people to visit—and stay—on your website, then make it easy for them.