Web design encompasses many categories that deal with website responsiveness, most of which catalog ideas about the user experience, meaning how users interact with the content you’re posting. While this is a key ingredient to making a visually appealing website, it is also weighing down your website, making the user experience cumbersome and awkward. Each feature you include takes its toll in the form of lowered performance on the user’s end.
To boost your traffic sky high, check out these common practices and techniques that will help you create a user-friendly environment, increasing the positive user experience.
Responding To Any Device
A responsive website is one that can be comfortably viewed and used on any device, including laptops, MACs, PCs and, obviously, mobile phones. The age we’re living in means the majority of the populace doesn’t want to switch to and from devices in order to use a single site; they want it all on one device. Everyone wants to have increased convenience and smoothness, which above all means saving time. Therefore, the first task of making a website involved making sure it’s responsive on a variety of devices.
Size Matters
Ideally, your content will fit any screen resolution. In practice, it’s easier said than done but any effort you make towards increasing the range of resolutions that your content is best viewed at helps the user experience immensely. To put it in a different way: if your website isn’t viewable on the user’s current device, you can expect the user to move on to a different website that is viewable before changing devices to view your content. That’s why you should strive to constantly improve your content and the range of devices it’s compatible with, without losing any of its luster or meaning.
No experience is more miserable than having a website loaded only to discover the images are optimized for desktop computers, making them too big to be loaded onto a mobile device. Mobile users will have a wretched experience, getting half an image or just a blank square where the image should be. The ideal solution is to use CSS to style your layout depending on which device is used to access your website, netting a consistent look and optimized performance across a slew of devices.
Browser Compatibility And Social Media Platforms
Besides device type and resolution, you should also consider browser compatibility. You might adore Chrome, Firefox or Safari but there are all sorts of browsers out there that might not display your content as expected. One solution is to put a nag screen, reminding users to update their browser but for those who can’t or don’t know how to do it, you should make an effort to increase compatibility.
Right now, the most interesting trend in web design is creating websites that can be viewed through Facebook and Twitter. Social media platforms want to keep users on the platform as much as possible, displaying outside content within the platforms CSS, meaning you have to tinker with your website’s CSS to adapt if you want that traffic.
Test Your New Look
Web design comes down to constant testing. You’ll eventually realize that things are either broken or are about to be broken by any of a thousand dependencies getting the latest update. Get used to constantly testing every change you make from as many devices as you can. The responsive design paradigm no longer means that only the website is responsive; you must also be constantly on your toes and tinkering with your content.
Thankfully, we’ve got all sorts of site validators and mobile emulators that cut down on juggling hardware. Some browsers started including similar tools and plugins in their framework as well, helping web developers figure out the problem. Firefox and Chrome are two flagship browsers that involve native functionality that helps developers work on a website without using a third-party app.
Everything you do should be backed by data, and the only way to get data is through testing. Just because you find your design usable, doesn’t mean the users will do the same. Wherever possible, try to create a uniform look and feel to your website, helping users immerse themselves in your website and the content it hosts.
Watch Out For Advertisements
Modern web design is unthinkable without ads yet many web designers still ignore videos and banners when it comes to user experience optimization. Making ads visible but not obtrusive is still a big headache in web design, one you should work on until you find a solution, increasing consumer satisfaction and traffic.