What is Responsive Design and How to Audit Web Responsively?

"Have you ever wondered why so many digital products (iPhone, Samsung, MacBook, etc.) are created in countless different sizes, but when surfing websites, the interfaces are still compatible with each screen? Does the business behind these websites have a strong team of designers and developers, meticulously crafting unique interfaces for every screen size?

The answer is, of course, no! Nowadays, there are many ways to make a website work well on different devices. Among them, the most popular is Responsive Web Design, allowing developers to only need to write a single set of code that can be used for all screen sizes.

So, what exactly is Responsive Web Design definition? What makes Responsive Websites so popular? How to design a responsive website? Find out with Lollypop Vietnam through the following article!"

What is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive Web Design (RWD) is a design approach that helps websites display well on many devices and screen sizes (phones, laptops, desktops, etc.) to ensure usability and user satisfaction.

Responsive Web Design was created by Ethan Marcotte in May 2010 in the context of the rapidly increasing number of web users on mobile devices. At that time, WAP Design (Wireless Application Protocol) was the choice for mobile design, but faced many limitations. To provide the best mobile web experience, businesses needed to optimize a new version for each device type. Of course, with the development of a variety of mobile devices with many different sizes, this was impossible!

The Responsive website, with only 1 set of code and 1 unique domain name, provides the optimal user experience on all devices, successfully solving all the problems of WAP Design.

The importance of responsive website design

1. Save costs

Responsive designs bring great economic benefits to businesses. Its ability to adapt to different screen sizes eliminates the cost of developing multiple versions. In addition, businesses also save budget and time for each product maintenance.

2. Increase SEO rankings

Responsive designs enable developers to use only 1 domain name and 1 set of code for all devices, which helps Google Bot scan and index the Website more easily. This helps to design a more SEO-friendly website, thereby increasing organic traffic for businesses. In 2018, Google confirmed that Responsiveness is one of the top criteria that affects SEO rankings on Google Search. 

3. Optimize user experience (UX)

The compatibility of Responsive design with various screen sizes enhances the user experience, particularly on mobile devices. Users no longer need to excessively zoom in to read website content. Moreover, buttons and links automatically adjust to the appropriate size and spacing, enabling seamless interactions.

Furthermore, Responsive design UX helps improve the website's loading speed. This is because Responsive Web utilizes a single URL and provides the same HTML and CSS code for all devices. As a result, users do not have to navigate through the process of redirecting or separating URLs for mobile devices. The website also reduces the amount of data transmitted, leading to faster page loading speeds and a lower bounce rate.

Responsive Design vs Adaptive Design

In contrast to Responsive Design, where a single website version can be adjusted to adapt to all devices, Adaptive Design involves creating multiple fixed layouts to optimize the display across different screen sizes.

Responsive Design is often preferred for websites with a simple structure, where the designer can create one layout version using the grid system in frameworks like Bootstrap. However, for more complex websites, Responsive Design can lead to issues in the scaling process for each device. This is why many businesses opt for Adaptive Websites to ensure a seamless user experience across all device sizes.

When designing an Adaptive Website, designers typically create three distinct layouts: one for mobile, one for tablets, and one for desktops. Upon accessing the website, the device's screen size is detected, and the most suitable layout is selected to provide an optimized user experience. 

Research suggests that the page loading speed of Adaptive Websites can be 2-3 times faster than Responsive designs. However, the need to optimize for each screen size makes Adaptive Design a more resource-intensive and time-consuming approach. Despite this, the economic benefits of Responsive Design often make it the preferred choice for businesses today.

Read more: Inclusive Design: Design Approach for All Users

How to make responsive website to optimize user experience

1. Get started with Wireframes

Wireframes are layout sketches of Website/app interfaces in the form of Box Holders to represent main components such as button positions, text, images,...

When creating your Wireframes, you need to keep the design very simple at this stage. The reason for this is that the Wireframe phase is all about testing different layout solutions to find the one that best suits your target audience. You don't want to waste time optimizing each Wireframe design pixel-perfect. Instead, focus solely on the functionality and information structure of the different layout options.

You may want to read more about: Top 5 UX Metrics Frameworks to measure your design performance

2. Identify Breakpoints

Breakpoints are the screen width limits where your website will adjust its layout to fit the user's device. These breakpoints are determined using CSS media queries.

Media queries are a feature of CSS that allow you to define and apply responsive CSS rules based on certain device or display environment conditions. Within these media queries, you'll include the breakpoint conditions to determine when specific CSS rules should be applied.

The developer will typically rely on the wireframe designs of responsive designers to determine the appropriate breakpoint values for a project. There is no single standard for selecting breakpoint limits, as it depends on the specific design and content of each website.

However, there are 3 common breakpoint ranges that are widely used today:

• 320 - 768px: breakpoint for smartphones
• 768 - 1024px: breakpoint for tablets
• >1024px: breakpoint for laptops, PCs, TVs...

3. Prioritize design for mobile devices

When designing a responsive user interface, you should prioritize designing the mobile version first, before refining the content for larger viewports. This is called a "mobile-first" design approach. The reason is that mobile-first design forces you to focus on the truly essential content and functionality that your users need, rather than getting caught up in adding unnecessary elements.

While building a mobile responsive website, you should also consider hiding some content to optimize the responsive page layout and space for smaller screens. A common example of this is using a "hamburger menu" on the navigation, which hides the full menu behind an expandable icon on mobile.

In addition, interactive elements should be designed to accommodate touchscreen usability on mobile devices. You can use CSS media queries like orientation and aspect-ratio to detect the user's device type and adjust the design accordingly.

4. Use Fluid Grid

Fluid Grid is a flexible grid system that divides the width of a page into smaller, equally-sized columns to display content.

Fluid Grid will determine the maximum layout size of the interface and divide the grid into a certain number of columns with corresponding width and height. This makes it easy for elements to adjust whenever the screen size changes.

Currently, there are two main types of website sizes: 

• Fixed layout: Designed in standard sizes (960px or 1024px) and hence the interface becomes unbalanced and cramped as screen size changes.
• Fluid layout: This can automatically adjust accordingly according to the % parameter, maintaining a consistent and responsive visual design.

5. Improve image size

Image quality is a crucial factor in user experience (UX). Websites with sharp, well-sized images create a positive impression on visitors. However, when the device screen size changes, some images may become blurred or distorted, leading to a less-than-ideal user experience.

To improve this, you need to resize the image by:

• Using Width and Max-width in CSS: The width property sets a fixed width for an image, ensuring it maintains the same size across all dimensions. Pairing width with max-width limits the maximum width while maintaining the original aspect ratio. This means that when the image is scaled, the ratio between width and height is preserved, avoiding distortion.
• Using SVG files: Unlike raster images (typically JPEG/PNG format with a fixed resolution), Scalar Vector Graphics (SVG) has an infinite resolution. SVG images can be resized without losing quality, as they are defined by mathematical vectors rather than a fixed pixel grid. This makes SVG a powerful choice for responsive design UX, as the images can scale up or down seamlessly to fit different screen sizes.

6. Optimize Typography

Like images, text quality will also greatly affect visitors' impression of the website. A website with inappropriate typography not only affects the user's reading experience, but also makes them doubt the reputation of the business, as well as the quality of content on the website.

To optimize Typography for your Website, you need:

• Choose appropriate fonts: When selecting fonts for your website, prioritize popular and widely-supported options like Helvetica, Roboto, or similar system fonts. These fonts are optimized to display well across different screen sizes and resolutions, ensuring a balanced and legible presentation. Avoid using obscure or decorative fonts that may not render consistently on all devices.
• Setting font size with Fluid Units: Use relative font size units like em or rem instead of fixed pixel values (px). This allows the text to scale dynamically in response to the user's screen size, providing a more user-friendly experience across different devices.

Below is an example of a code for font size in rem:

html { font-size:100%; }

@media (min-width: 768px) { body {font-size:1rem;} }

@media (min-width: 1024px) { body {font-size:1.5rem;} }

Read more about optimize Web/App Localization: Understanding the role of culture in website and app localization

Conclusion

With both economic and business efficiency benefits, it is no surprise that Responsive Websites have become a popular choice for businesses today. However, the responsive design process requires close collaboration between UI/UX designers and developers to ensure optimal technical factors and deliver the best user experience across all devices.

If you are in need of a responsive website and looking for a reliable service design partner, don’t hesitate to contact us! Lollypop Design Studio is a leading UI UX design company on a global scale. We own a team of experienced Designers and Developers, providing comprehensive solutions from Research, UX Design solutions ( including UX audit, UX content,...) and UI Design to Product Development on digital platforms.

Connect with Lollypop today to schedule a free consultation on how to optimize the user experience for your business!