Web users access websites on a range of different devices, from laptops and mobile phones to tablets and smart TVs. Every user expects a website to render and function properly no matter what kind of site it is, which presents a challenge for both brands and marketers.
Smartphones are now the most common device to search on, with over 60% of web traffic coming from mobile devices, excluding tablets. Even if you’re running a brick-and-mortar business, mobile devices are the method most of your potential customers will use to find you, even in your own city. The rise in voice search and smart devices means brands now have to focus more on factors like conversational keywords and local SEO to keep appearing on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Brands and marketers have the choice between two different kinds of web design: adaptive and responsive. They can retrofit an existing site to make it more suitable for mobile phones (or other devices) or design the site to fluidly adjust to different screen sizes. While both require work in the short term, responsive screen design saves further modifications down the line and has become the industry go-to.
Adopting the most common screen sizes for responsive design is an essential part of optimising for an audience. It keeps user experience consistent and positive across various devices and improves search engine optimisation (SEO), leading to better results for brands all around.
What is Responsive Design?
Responsive web design is the technique and process of creating websites that change or adapt to look their best depending on the user’s device. This dynamic design style ensures that text, images and other elements remain clear and readable whether you’re on a smartphone, desktop, iPad or any other device.
In web design and development terms, responsive design doesn’t mean making a new website for each device. Instead, it involves using HTML and CSS, flexible grid layouts and a single codebase to deliver the same content across various devices with different screen resolutions. Understanding the ideal screen sizes for responsive design is a large part of this.
The most common principles of responsive design include:
Fluid grid layouts
Websites with responsive design use fluid grid layouts that can change rather than ones that stay the same width. This allows the layout of the site to grow or shrink based on the device it’s displayed on. For example, a webpage that has two columns on a computer might reduce the layout to just one on a mobile device.
Dynamic images and media
Responsive web designers aim to make images flexible enough to be resized without losing quality. Some common techniques for achieving this include using CSS to set the max width, using the srcset attribute to change the size of the images to suit different devices, and implementing lazy loading to enhance performance on slower connections.
Media queries
CSS media queries allow you to keep your website looking its best no matter what sort of device people are using to view it. This can involve measures such as making the text larger, hiding some aspects of the page or changing the arrangement of the page.
Viewport meta tags
A viewport is the visible area of a webpage, and it varies by size depending on your browser window. For example, a tablet’s default viewport size is smaller than a desktop’s. A viewport meta tag tells the browser how to adjust the dimensions of a page to suit the device. Using a tag, you can set the viewport’s width to the width of the device and set the initial zoom level.
There’s a lot to take into consideration, including screen sizes for responsive design. Fortunately, there are some approaches you can take to improve your chances of success.
Considerations for Responsive Design
Some considerations and best practices for responsive screen design include:
Popular web browsers
Each web browser renders a website differently. Responsive web design involves testing websites on a range of desktop and mobile browsers to ensure their compatibility, adapting the capability of the site to both the screen resolution and the browser.
Friction
In marketing, friction is anything that prevents a user from completing a desired action: a poorly designed interface, a slow loading speed, or bugs. Responsive design involves eliminating any friction that may interfere with the user completing the desired action. You can eliminate (or at least minimise) friction by keeping user processes simple and uncluttered and by personalising your content.
Consistency
Maintaining the same visual and functional elements is an important aspect of responsive design and good design in general. Consistency across different devices and various screen sizes strengthens your brand identity, makes the experience feel more user-friendly regardless of the platform and increases the likelihood that shoppers will buy from you again.
How to Optimise Screen Sizes for Responsive Design
Knowing the most common resolutions and screen sizes for responsive design helps you deliver web pages that always meet customers’ needs on whichever device they’re using. There are a lot of different screen sizes for tablets, mobiles, desktop computers, etc. Some of the most common variations to be aware of include:
- 360x800: As seen on the Samsung Galaxy S21, this size makes up more than 11% of all mobile phone screens.
- 768x1024: This accounts for over 20% of all tablet screen resolutions, including the iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro 9.
- 1920x1080: A resolution that encompasses over 20% of desktop screen sizes.
Some methods you can use to optimise screen sizes for responsive design include:
Begin with a mobile-first approach
Mobile-first web design is when you design the mobile website first and then modify it to suit the desktop version. Mobile websites typically have more usability issues, so you can iron out these problems before you move onto the mobile website. It’s also a lot easier to scale up than it is to scale down due to the simplicity of mobile websites. Overall, mobile websites provide a solid foundation so you can focus on what’s absolutely necessary first and then build upon that.
Design for touch
Many mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have touchscreens. Optimising for touch (e.g. including call-to-actions with large, easy-to-find buttons) is important to mobile-friendly design.
Pay attention to typography
For text, you want to use scalable fonts that remain easy to read across all devices. This involves adjusting the line height and text spacing and using relative units like 'em' and 'rem' for font sizes instead of fixed units such as pixels.
Use the right HTML and coding
Optimising a website to suit different screen sizes requires technical knowledge and efficient use of CSS media queries, relative units (em, rem, %, vw, vh), viewport meta tags and responsive images and typography.
Effective Optimisation of Your Website with Anchor Digital
Anchor Digital can build you a professional, responsive website that shines on the screen of any device. With a combination of creative flair and technical know-how, we can optimise every element of your webpage to ensure that your site succeeds.
As a graphic design agency, we pay attention to both the user experience and user interface—UX and UI—of your website. The websites we designed don’t just look good: they’re responsive, easy to navigate and built to represent your brand identity. From visual assets that communicate your brand identity in one look to colours that evoke the emotions you want to represent you, we keep all our design elements under one roof so that you don’t have to go from agency to agency.
To find out more about our responsive web design, contact the Anchor Digital team.
