Responsive design is a crucial aspect of website development that enhances user experience and helps to avoid common SEO issues that can negatively impact a website’s ranking on Google’s search results.
Although Google has not officially confirmed responsive design as a ranking factor, the search engine giant has indicated its significance on multiple occasions.
Creating a website that is both structurally and visually responsive remains a challenge for many marketers and designers. However, there are various detailed steps that can be taken to improve website responsiveness.
What is responsive design?
Responsive Web Design (RWD) is the practice of developing web pages that display optimally across multiple devices and screen sizes.
This approach empowers web designers to construct a seamless website experience that caters to diverse user needs and preferences.
Given that mobile traffic constitutes almost half of all web traffic worldwide, it is imperative for website proprietors to priorities accessibility and user-friendliness, particularly on small screens like tablets and smartphones.
Why do you need a responsive website?
Responsive web design has proven to enhance user experience, however, several website proprietors are still apprehensive towards its adoption. It is necessary to priorities the integration of responsive web design due to the plethora of statistics that support its efficacy.
The benefits of having a responsive website on SEO are manifold, and here are eight ways in which responsive design can benefit your SEO strategy.
1. Mobile-first approach by Google
In recent years, Google has adopted a mobile-first strategy, recognizing the significant rise in mobile searches. As a result, it is crucial for websites to be adaptable to different devices for optimal user experience.
Google prioritizes accessibility to valuable content for its users, hence it tends to rank sites that meet this requirement by being responsive and user-friendly. Consequently, websites that adopt mobile responsive design are favored by Google’s algorithm.
2. Better usability
Assessing the duration a user spends on a page is a crucial factor in determining the relevance of your content and their overall satisfaction with your website. This is due to the fact that an unimpressed user is likely to abandon the site without further exploration.
Adopting a responsive web design enhances the speed, accessibility, and navigability of websites. Consequently, users can quickly locate the desired information, leading to prolonged engagement on your site.
Exceptional usability also improves the likelihood of repeat visits to your website. Notably, this extended engagement on your website increases the probability of users becoming paying customers or subscribers.
3. Improved customer experience
Google prioritizes user satisfaction by delivering content that aligns with their interests. Employing a user-centric approach is a reliable method of attaining higher search result rankings from Google.
Responsive web design is an indispensable element of providing a satisfying user experience. Satisfied users are more prone to transform into customers, subscribers, and leads. Employing responsive web design is among several techniques to secure a favorable user experience on your website.
4. Faster page speeds
Page loading time is a crucial element that significantly influences your SEO efforts and consequently affects your Search rankings.
The swiftness at which your website loads can determine the users’ interaction with your platform. It is essential to optimize your website to enhance fast loading and eliminate interruptions.
Responsive web designs that function well on mobile and desktop devices enable quicker page loading. Optimizing your page speed is an effective strategy to drive more traffic and boost conversions on your website.
5. Decrease bounce rate
The measurement of bounce rate is indicative of the promptness with which users arrive and then depart from a website. This parameter can reveal whether a website is meeting the search expectations of users.
A high bounce rate could imply that the website was either slow to load or failed to offer a satisfactory user experience. It is not limited to content, however.
Despite possessing great content, if the website design is not user-friendly, it may lead to user abandonment and a search for information elsewhere.
6. No duplicate content
Prioritizing website responsiveness necessitates careful attention to the site’s content and overall user experience. Responsive web design, while not directly addressing the issue of duplicate content, can effectively identify this common pitfall.
During website construction or redesign, it’s common to inadvertently create separate mobile and desktop versions, potentially leading to duplicate content problems. Despite having different URLs, the content can be identical, confusing Google’s content prioritisation.
Best practices for responsive web design stress the creation of a single, mobile-responsive version of the website, minimizing the risk of URL duplication. Additionally, it’s crucial to remain vigilant for other sources of duplicate content.
7. Higher Social Shares
Numerous RWD designers craft websites with social sharing functionality as a key consideration to facilitate convenient dissemination of content to users on a global scale.
While social shares do not affect search engine rankings, they enhance online audience expansion. Heightened social traffic equates to increased website visitors, translating to more prospective clients or subscribers for the enterprise.
Moreover, a remarkable social media presence bolsters website visibility. Integrating user-friendly social share buttons into your mobile-optimized website will motivate users to share your content, resulting in a significantly broader audience reach.
8. SEO gains
Numerous companies implement search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to elevate their position in Google’s search result rankings. Higher rankings offer better visibility to potential clients. In this regard, responsive design can positively impact SEO as Google prioritises mobile-friendly websites.
Coupled with other SEO elements, a responsive website design can significantly enhance search engine result rankings.
How to create a responsive design?
Responsive web design is a design approach that ensures websites are optimised for mobile, tablet, and desktop devices.
Neglecting to incorporate responsive design can lead to a considerable loss of users. Notably, Google considers mobile-friendliness when ranking websites.
According to the Google Webmaster Central Blog, the expansion of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal will have a substantial impact on search results, allowing users to obtain relevant, high-quality search results that are tailored to their devices.
As a result, a mobile-friendly website is an essential aspect of an online presence, particularly since the majority of users accessing websites use mobile devices.
Moreover, web designers acknowledge that “not being responsive on all devices” is a significant reason for a website redesign, accounting for 53.8%.
Therefore, website developers and designers priorities creating responsive websites. This section will explore several methods through which they can achieve this objective and test the level of responsiveness of websites.
1. Always set appropriate responsive breakpoints
Responsive design involves adapting a website’s content and design to different screen sizes and resolutions to optimise the user experience.
To achieve this, developers use responsive breakpoints, also known as CSS breakpoints or media query breakpoints.
These are predefined points in the code that trigger the website content to adjust itself to the screen size, ensuring that it is displayed in the correct layout without distortion, cuts, or obscurity.
Implementing CSS breakpoints enables website content to align itself with the screen size and display in a visually pleasing manner that facilitates consumption.
To achieve this, breakpoints should be established for the most commonly used device resolutions across mobile, desktop, and tablet platforms.
These may include 1920×1080, 1366×768, 360×640, 414×896, and 1536×864, which respectively account for 9.61%, 7.87%, 4.36%, 4.34%, and 4.11% of devices.
2. Starting with a fluid grid
In the past, websites relied on pixel measurements to position and set web elements. However, modern websites use a fluid grid system.
This system sizes and arranges elements on a webpage based on the screen size on which it is displayed. Unlike pixel-based designs, fluid grids allow elements to resize proportionally to fit the screen.
Fluid grids are structured with scalable columns that adjust to screen size, resulting in height and width ratios that are flexible.
Moreover, the text and elements’ proportions on the webpage vary depending on the screen size. Developing a fluid grid requires editing the website’s source code.
Fluid grids maintain visual consistency across multiple devices and offer better control over alignments. This system also facilitates quicker decision-making related to design choices.
3. Consider screenshots
In order to create a responsive website, consideration should be given to touchscreens which are now prevalent on most mobile devices such as phones and tablets.
A growing number of laptops are also being equipped with touchscreen capabilities alongside their keyboard functionality.
In order to cater to these touchscreen devices, a responsive website must be designed to accommodate them. For instance, a drop-down menu on the homepage should be calibrated appropriately.
On desktop view, each menu item must be sized to enable touch screen accessibility. On mobile screens, smaller elements such as buttons should be made more easily discernible and selectable.
This can be achieved through image usage, CTAs or optimization of these elements to ensure proper rendering on various screen sizes.
Responsive Image
To achieve responsiveness in images for various screen resolutions and devices, use modern image tag attributes. The following example can be studied:
<style>
img {
max-width: 100%;
}
</style>
<picture>
<source type="image/webp" srcset="https://my-image.com/my-image-100.webp 1x, https://my-image.com/my-image-200.webp 2x">
<source type="image/png" srcset="https://my-image.com/my-image-100.png 1x, https://my-image.com/my-image-200.png 2x">
<img alt="my image" src="https://my-image.com/my-image-200.png" loading="lazy" width="100" height="100">
</picture>
The max-width attribute enables the image to adjust its size according to the container width. The tags, picture, source, and img are combined to display one image that is optimised for the user’s device.
Source tags are used to reference both WebP and PNG formats of the same image, which can be utilized by browsers that support them.
The srcset attribute notifies the browser about which image should be displayed based on the screen resolution of the device. The loading attribute with a value of “lazy” enables native lazy loading.
Responsive Video
The aspect ratio method can be employed to make videos responsive to various screen sizes. The code below illustrates this:
<style>
.videoWrapper {
position: relative;
padding-bottom: 56.25%; /* 16:9 */
height: 0;
}
.videoWrapper iframe {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
}
</style>
<div class="videoWrapper">
<!-- Copy & Pasted from YouTube -->
<iframe width="560" height="349" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/n_dZNLr2cME?rel=0&hd=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>
In this example, a YouTube video is embedded as an iframe within a div container with the class “videoWrapper”.
The container element is set to position: relative to allow for absolute positioning of child elements. The height attribute is set to 0, and padding-bottom is set to 56.25% to achieve dynamic behaviour with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
The iframe element is positioned absolutely with top: 0 and left: 0 relative to its parent, and its width and height are set to 100% to establish the aspect ratio layout.
4. Include Typography
In the realm of web development, font sizes are conventionally set in pixels. While this approach suffices for static websites, it falls short for those designed with responsiveness in mind.
A responsive font size necessitates proportional adjustment relative to the width of the parent container. This accommodation ensures typography remains legible across multiple devices and screen sizes.
Fortunately, CSS3 introduces a unit known as rems, which functions analogously to these units but with respect to the HTML element.
5. Try using pre-designed themes
In the event that developers and designers are faced with an urgent timeline for creating a responsive website, they may consider leveraging a pre-built theme or layout that comes equipped with responsive features.
WordPress presents a variety of alternatives in this category, both free and paid. Once a theme has been selected, designers can concentrate on customizing the color scheme, branding, and textual content.
6. Test the responsiveness on multiple real devices
When embarking on the process of making a website mobile responsive, it is crucial to ensure that testing is conducted on actual devices, which is an often overlooked aspect.
While developers may manipulate the code, it is vital to verify the website’s functionality under real user conditions.
To ensure that the website is truly mobile responsive, it is essential to examine its appearance on a variety of devices. Ideally, real device testing should be conducted to accurately assess how end-users will perceive the design.
To confirm that the website is mobile responsive, developers should utilise a responsive design checker upon completion of coding, like BrowserStack.
These tools offer access to the latest real devices for the purpose of assessing the website’s appearance and level of responsiveness.
Conclusion
A user-centric approach is crucial in responsive design, prioritizing seamless interaction with your website and signaling to Google that your site is search-friendly across all devices.
Initiating a thoughtful web design process from the outset can provide a well-optimised structure that is readily available on any gadget.
A robust foundation is instrumental in ensuring your website is primed for SEO triumphs.
Is your website optimised for mobile browsing? It’s time to elevate it with a responsive and intuitive design that accommodates users’ needs.