Mobile friendly website design – full guide

Portable devices (tablets and smartphones) have quickly grown from a luxury to a common part of everyday life. Today, every child and adult has at least one gadget with Internet access. Mobile internet usage first surpassed computers in 2016. Since then, this trend has intensified as companies release more and more touchscreen devices. In 2019, over 55% of all traffic came from phones and tablets.

For business owners, this means it’s time to design mobile friendly website in order to attract the largest user base. Although the distribution of traffic for certain resources will vary, rest assured that at least half of them will open your website in a mobile browser. If this category of visitors is not happy with the structure/layout/idea of your resource, you will lose a huge audience of customers.

In this article, we will talk about the benefits of mobile friendly web design and how the right approach increases the profits of the owners of such portals. Also, you will learn about the main features of websites adapted for touch screens and mobile browsers.

That could be your new direction or your lifebuoy!

 

What does it mean when a website is mobile-friendly?

Now more than ever, users interact with different companies through smartphones and tablets. The days when you had to offer a convenient resource for desktop devices are long gone. Now many business owners are wondering how to design a mobile friendly website because, according to socPub, 57% of users said they would not recommend a brand with a poorly designed portal for portable devices.

 

When we talk about mobile-friendly websites, we mean a resource that looks and works great on the screens of our phones. In recent years this solution has become more popular as 90% of users consider this parameter to be critical. Accordingly, many of them will close the page if they cannot find what they need for a long time. Such a website should be sized and coded for an easy interaction on any touchscreen, meaning:

  • It is easy to search and read the content.
  • It is easy to navigate and jump through pages.
  • Fast loading speed.
  • Intuitive interface.
  • Great user experience.

 

Designing a mobile friendly website, you need to consider these parameters as a top priority. They influence the opinion of users by determining a quality mobile-friendly resource that attracts new visitors.

 

 

The benefits of a mobile-friendly website

 

Those of you who want to do mobile friendly web page design are probably wondering if they are making the right decision. Well, to answer this question, you should remember the number of mobile users who have access to the Internet 24/7. Besides, a resource adapted to gadget screens provides more advantages than you think.

 

Great UX

 

We often find websites that open in a mobile browser, and we see a huge pile of garbage. If visitors cannot easily find information and read texts, it will dash your hopes. Proper use of mobile friendly website design will set you apart from the competition and make a great customer impression.

 

Fast load speed

 

Each user who opens your resource has a limited time, so the speed is extremely important. The good news is that such portal loads quickly on devices because its code is written in such a way that it is compatible with tablets and phones.

 

 

Improved SEO

 

To be successful in optimization, we need to meet Google’s requirements. The system recommends webmasters to launch responsive sites. If this is not possible, they need to create separate resources to serve a mobile audience of customers. That is a guarantee that your platform will rank well in the search results of Google.

 

Advantage over competitors

 

Website design mobile friendly gives you a great competitive edge. If your business is in a progressive niche, visit your competitors’ websites and analyze their strategies. That will allow you to customize your product and grab the attention of your target audience.

 

Converting visitors to customers

 

With a website optimized for mobile screens, you will show loyalty and care for users. That increases the likelihood of purchasing products, which will increase your customer base.

 

Low maintenance costs

 

Without mobile friendly web design, you have to constantly use time and resources on the site to keep it attractive and convenient. With a mobile design, you can forget about it because all services are automated. In the long run, this will save your budget, and most importantly, you won’t waste a lot of time!

As you can see, the benefits of this approach are clear!

 

The importance of having a mobile-friendly website

 

Web design mobile friendly plays an important role in your business, as more than half of customers will visit the site via smartphone and/or tablet. You need to make sure they have a great experience whether they are using an iPhone or Android device. If the resource takes too long to load or the client cannot find the menu options, he will go to the website of another company.

 

We have already talked about the benefits that you get with a design mobile friendly website. However, there are two key elements that influence user opinion. They require special attention because you can only make a first impression once. Don’t miss the opportunity to convert more visitors into active customers.

Your website needs to be fast

Modern users do not like to wait for sites to load. This trend began after the launch of services such as Uber. And recent research shows that clients leave pages that take longer than 8-10 seconds to load and half of them expect them to load completely in 5 seconds. You can use this chance to get ahead as the average website takes about 15 seconds to display all the content.

 

Of course, the high speed of your mobile friendly web page design will attract more customers, which will lead to a significant increase in profit. Each client visits the site to solve his problem (buy a product, catch a taxi, and more). The faster he does it, the more positive feedback you will get.

Your website needs to be secured

Unfortunately, there is no sense in web design mobile friendly site if it does not guarantee the safety of visitors. Due to the high incidence of identity theft in 2018, Google started labeling non-secure websites warning desktop and mobile users.

 

Your customers are probably smart and informed people who are aware of the dangers hidden in unsecured sites. Therefore, they use search engine hints to avoid sites that question the security of their personal data.

 

How to fix the situation? You should use popular cybersecurity tools and technologies. So, your site with mobile friendly web design should provide SSL and HTTPS certificates that indicate that all information is encrypted and people can use the service without restrictions.

Difference between mobile design and responsive website

What is the difference between mobile-first and responsive approaches to building a website? Which one will be more effective for the business? These are popular questions when it comes to choosing the type of website. We will answer them to make your choice easier!

 

 

Web design mobile friendly

 

In fact, this is a separate version of the desktop resource developed specifically for smartphones and tablets. Thanks to the modified code, this website works great on all types of gadgets. Its functions do not change except for the scale, which depends on the screen size of your device. However, some features (navigation drop-downs, for example) can be limited because they are difficult to use on gadgets.

 

What attracts users to such sites? First of all, they are available anytime, anywhere. The increased download speed will delight every demanding customer and, as a result, that will allow you to outperform the competition.

 

Responsive design

 

This type of design changes depending on the screen size of the smartphone. It automatically changes the shape/structure of content, images, and graphic elements. Its functionality is determined by the performance of the device through which you visited the site.

 

If you want to check how the resource will change on the mobile phone, open it in a computer browser and reduce the size of the window. If the page is not responsive, unfortunately, you cannot visit it on your mobile device.

 

Such sites are responsive to the user, improving usability regardless of device.

 

Mobile friendly website design and SEO

 

The world of digital marketing changed in 2015 when Google announced that the usability of mobile sites was now a ranking symbol. Accordingly, the better experience mobile resources offer, the higher they will appear in search results.

 

Why is everyone striving for a high rating? This indicator affects the popularity of design mobile friendly website and, as a result, more and more customers visit your resource. Moreover, many of them will buy products and use the services offered.

 

For SEO, you need to optimize your content and make it easy to view on any device. Do not forget about the high download speed that we talked about in this article many times. All these solutions will help your portal to take higher positions in search engines!

 

Next steps

 

The first thing you need to do is to make sure the site is truly mobile responsive. That is an integral part of most types of business and if you are going to be successful, you need to choose a mobile audience of customers.

 

While designing a mobile friendly website, pay attention to the content layout and its user-friendliness. That is the main secret of success!

 

FAQ

 

What is a mobile-friendly website?

That is a resource that looks and works great on the screens of all gadgets. Users can visit such a site wherever they are.

 

How to make a new website mobile friendly?

Follow simple guidelines, make the main information easy to find, make the buttons larger, and make the font easier to read.

 

What are the benefits of a mobile site?

Excellent user experience, fast load speed, easy to read information, more customers, and low maintenance costs. All this you will receive thanks to the resource adapted to mobile screens.

 

Does the site have to be secure?

Yes! That is one of the most important parameters that determine the position of a resource in search engines. Moreover, Google marks portals without HTTPS and SSL certificates as insecure.

What is the difference between web development and web design?

All bright and powerful resources that you open in your browser are the result of the painstaking work of web developers and web designers. People who are not familiar with these technologies often use designer and developer terms synonymously, although they are not.

Hearing about this, many of you have the only question – what is the difference between web design and web development? These are two different professions, but despite this, both professionals care about your experience when you visit a particular site. Sometimes all the functions are performed by a web developer if he works in a small company that does not hire designers. However, a beautiful, popular, and powerful resource requires the efforts of several specialists.

In this article, we will try to describe the difference between web development and web design.

 

What is a web designer?

Before creating and developing a website, application, or other product, we need to make a plan. The web designer creates the idea and layout of the future project. He also develops the appearance and behavior of the resource by correctly placing each element (buttons, links). Comparing web development vs web design, specialists of the second category are often underestimated.

 

The designer is the person who makes your website attractive and effective using Photoshop for visuals and HTML/CSS for coding. But that’s not all, as designers work in several directions.

User Experience (UX) designer

If you imagine a website as a fishing rod, the main task of UX designers is to keep users on the hook. After carefully researching the product and the needs of the target audience, they will definitely create an effective and popular website that will attract more and more visitors.

 

In addition, the UX designer approves the site layout that provides the best user experience. The expert makes sure that navigation and use of the platform are convenient and fast.

Accordingly, if people like your site, they will visit it over and over again, which brings great results to your business.

 

User Interface (UI) designer

The difference between web design and development becomes especially clear when we are looking for a way to improve the interaction of visitors with the site. In this case, you need to hire a UI designer to work on the interface, embodying the complex ideas and uniqueness of your organization/company. At the same time, a specialist must combine these elements with a simple operation of the resource.

 

What’s the difference between UX and UI designers? The point is that UX professionals conduct research to create a solid foundation for positive user experience. UI designers work with the visual presentation of a website to capture the interest of your target audience.

Visual designer

Some professionals cannot afford UX and UI designers. So, they were looking for one specialist who can combine these two specialties, which led to the emergence of visual designers. They not only improve the experience of your customers through programming, but they also solve creative issues by building corporate product designs.

 

Having “universal” specialists capable of performing multiple tasks is another difference between web design and web development. Positions of visual designers have become very popular because they can do what you need.

What is a web developer?

When considering web design vs web development, we also need to find out what functions are performed by developers, also known as programmers. They take finished web design and create a complete website. By dividing the design into several components, programmers use HTML or more advanced software like JavaScript and JQuery to develop your project.

 

Professional developers offer clients a simplified way to maintain and update a site through a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress or Joomla. All programmers work in three directions performing certain functions of varying complexity.

Back-end developer

That is a category of specialists who control data and server requests. Dynamic data websites usually require back-end services. That means that users submit a form with personal information, for example, during registration or simply save an article for your blog page.

 

If the site needs to save the data but use it at a later stage, it will need to connect to the database. That is made possible by a direct connection from the server itself. Accordingly, the back-end developer needs to know some server-side languages (Python, C#, PHP) and write database queries with MySQL or SQL.

 

 

In other words, the task of such programmers is to create logical and functional resources using various programs. They also need to test their products and fix bugs quickly.

Front-end developer

Specialists in this category do client-side development. That will help us define another difference between web development and design. Front-end developers are more concerned with web design than with internal development to create elements that the user can see on the site.

 

To perform different tasks, they prefer three main languages: HTML, JavaScript, CSS. Thanks to them, developers create complete resources with various fonts, typography, animation, and so on.

 

In other words, front-end specialists create frameworks and elements that your customers will interact with on the website.

 

Full-stack developer

These are specialists who work at different levels, but we do not want to complicate their work, so we will say that a full-stack developer is a specialist who unites front and back-end technologies.

 

Large companies have separate front and back-end teams, small organizations with limited budgets are looking for versatile specialists, so full-stack developers are like visual designers. They not only use back-end technologies but also design solutions that your website visitors will interact with.

The salary difference between web design and web development

These days, it is difficult for web designers to find suitable jobs with good compensation. As already mentioned, many companies do not hire specialists for this position because they are simply asking their front-end developers to build the user interface for a new website.

 

We found another difference between web development and web design. It is easier for a programmer to find a job, but he needs to improve and update his skills. As digital technology advances rapidly, you will need to learn new web development tools to meet the needs of your employer.

 

 

The limited number of jobs for web designers and the high demands for programmers are reflected at the salary level.

 

So, here is web design vs web development average salaries:

 

  • Designer: $10- $50 per hour.
  • Developer: $30- $65 per hour.

 

Remember that your salary depends on several factors. You will receive different compensation in small and large companies whose leaders also pay attention to your skills and experience. Accordingly, you will need to keep abreast of new trends and explore the functionality of new tools and programming languages.

Explain the difference between web development and web design

 

In this article, we have covered all the key points in the work of both types of professionals. It’s time to summarize and talk about the main differences between these areas.

 

 

Defining a web designer and developer

 

Considering the features of the new site, the designer is responsible for the aesthetic rendering that will display all graphic elements and content. The programmer will be responsible for the technical integrity of the site, and his toolbox includes different programming languages.

 

Level of salaries

 

This is one of the biggest questions in web development vs web design topic. In 2019, Glassdoor researched and found the median annual pay for web developers is $75K per year. Meanwhile, web designers are earning $55-58K. This, of course, depends on many parameters, including your skills and location.

 

Web design vs web development: used tools

 

Programmers build websites and applications using coding languages: CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. In most projects, they use additional tools for database configuration, user authentication, and other technical elements.

 

Designers do not participate in writing the code, but they monitor its serviceability and correct display on the site. Since they are in charge of rendering content, they use Illustrator, GIMP, and popular Adobe Photoshop.

 

Knowledge and skills

 

It is obvious that the main difference between web design and development is hidden in the skills of both specialists. If you want to become a developer, you will need technical knowledge to write the correct code and display all the nuances. Designers create creative solutions, and they always need new ideas to build unique websites.

FAQ

 

What is the main difference between web development and design?

The main difference is in the tasks and responsibilities of each specialist. The web designer is responsible for the visualization of the site, while the programmer makes sure that all elements are displayed correctly, and the site performs its functions.

 

Which specialty (design or development) should I choose?

The answer is simple: it depends on your skills, knowledge, priorities, and desired salary. It is easier for a web developer to find a highly compensated job.

 

What skills and tools does the designer use?

The advanced web designer uses visualization tools like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Depending on the complexity and requirements of the project, you will also need analytics tools.

 

What are the tools of a programmer?

Web development vs web design has one more difference since developers create products using programming languages like JavaScript.

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