Useful Considerations for Responsive Web Design

July 16, 2014 | By Team Position²

Mobile internet penetration is growing at an exponential rate. According to a recent

eMarketer study, four out of five global Internet users in 2014 are mobile web users.

So, what does this growth rate mean to the online world?

Mobile will become an essential platform for marketing in the digital world

Website rendering across different mobile devices will assume significance

Mobile friendly designs will be key to enhance user experience

Optimizing for mobile will be an added advantage

Let us now look into two important actualities: having a mobile friendly site and

optimizing the same.

As we talk of mobile friendly websites, a key aspect on the priority list is responsiveness.

So, what is Responsive Web Design (RWD)? A responsive site is one which adapts to its

surrounding environment and caters to users browsing with different device resolutions.

As Jeffrey Veen of Adobe says, “Responsive web design represents a fundamental shift

in how we‟ll build websites for the decade to come”.

Talking about responsive, one of the top sites we found during the recent football craze

was the „Sequence World Cup‟ campaign created by Sequence Agency, UK.

Having understood the importance of RWD, you need to look at three key considerations

while making any website responsive:

1. Design considerations

The first thing that comes to mind while designing for responsiveness is whether to have

a single site or multiple sites for desktop and mobile. Web designers need to decide if

they need a single site and how information will flow across the web and mobile. Among

these options, responsive sites occupy first place, followed by apps for mobile users

which take user personas into consideration.

Other technical considerations which have been widely discussed include flexible

images, grid foundation and media queries. A combination of these three makes a site

responsive.

2. Performance considerations

The general perception has been that responsive sites take more time to load. Ever since

Ethan Marcotte introduced the concept of responsive web, designers are trying out

methods to improve performance and the following are some tips on the same:

Serving images on Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) instead of servers and also

making the images smaller

Using Javacripts as the image loading technique (the „noscript‟ technique)

Using conditional loading and other CSS tricks that help improve performance.

Online tools like Google Page Speed Tools help make performance better. This

should be backed by tests at regular intervals.

3. Optimization considerations

While the above two considerations improve the user experience and performance of the

website, it is important for a marketer to have the site optimized for search since there is

always a correlation between RWD and website experience.

Responsive web and SEO go hand-in-hand. Google support for RWD-enabled websites

and search engines catering to users‟ requirements for all screen resolutions makes it

important to optimize websites based on RWD. Usability is one key area that Google

looks at while ranking websites. RWD helps users reach the right type of content across

browsers.

Content strategy combined with keyword research and analysis merits close attention.

The right balance of short and long tail, and geo-specific keywords with the right density

should be considered.

Having the right blend of content for mobile sites is the winning point for mobile SEO.

Mobile sites mean less content and the right way to optimize less content is to have only

the most necessary part of the content on your mobile site.

Site structure and internal linking should not be neglected. A deep level of interlinks

going up to 2-3 clicks helps leverage SEO value. Higher level pages should be cross-

linked properly.

Google has in fact recommended use of RWD and said that websites optimized for

mobile will be looked at with authority by search bots. With Google giving higher

importance to Usability (UX), a responsive site with the basics of SEO covered should

help cater to a mobile audience as well.

In the end, it‟s all about providing a quality experience – be it on a desktop or on mobile.

Go responsive & stay updated!

Contributed by Chetan Rajasekaraiah, Senior SEO Specialist, SEO team