Singapore has tremendously developed in the field of online marketing with the higher percentage of business being conducted through the internet. Most businesses have an official website where they transact their online business. These technology developments have resulted in a rise of demand from the business owners for mobile version websites that suit all devices. It is essential for your site to have mobile search as the majority of Google search are made through smartphones or tablets. However, web design and development professionals know it is not easy to keep pace with new mobile devices and resolutions that come up daily. Making a website for each of the different resolutions is have many considerations involved.
What is responsive web design?
This term refers to how the design and development of a website should respond to the behaviour of the user and the website environment dependent on the screen size and platform. It is the creation of a mobile-friendly site. Responsive web design is focused on rendering your images and page elements proportional to the device they are being accessed through by use of fluid grids. It does not influence the speed of your website. Many digital marketing agencies in Singapore offer excellent web design and development services through utilisation of grids, layouts, images, and CSS media queries. The website developed changes to the appropriate image size, resolution and scripting capabilities when you switch between a mobile, iPad and laptop.
Mobile first indexing is finally here and Singapore business owners are feeling pressed to make sure that their site is fully optimised for it. No matter how large or small your business is, it’s important that your site accommodates mobile search. And that’s because the majority of Google searches are done on a tablet or smartphone.
In fact, according to research, 69% of mobile searchers claim that they are more likely to purchase from a brand with a mobile site. And these statistics leave Singapore business owners with one question: is my site responsive enough? It’s time to take a look at your web design options.
Automatic adjustment to the environment for a website is essential. It helps create many custom-made website solutions in solving the needs of each user. Do you want to create a Singapore responsive mobile website? Below are the tips to follow in building a responsive web design.
Reactive design is targeted at offering the very best user experience across a wide selection of platforms, if you’re surfing from the PC, your notebook, your tablet computer or your smartphone. It is born from the notion that displays are used by us and that this content needs to react to coordinate with your monitor size.
It is important the site of your business, like brakes or a vehicle steering wheel, is reactive. Let’s take a peek at what design is, why this should be used by you, and ways to apply it on your site or inside your layout.
What’s reactive layout?
For contemporary sites, a nice user experience is based on responsive layouts.
The purpose of design that is responsive is to earn the user experience though the design might seem slightly different. You might present information in two columns onto a notebook and 1 column on a smartphone, but the content and branding will stay the same.
Design that is Reactive guarantees confusion — minimal scrolling, panning, zooming, and — most significantly. It makes the experience enjoyable for everybody.
You need your site as it will on a notebook computer to appear as great. That is what design that is reactive can provide.
How to utilise design that is responsive?
Developing a user experience is important to the longevity of any business. And believe it or not, your site is an extension of your organisation that is physical.
When clients walk into your store, you provide them a drink may greet them, and inquire what questions you’re able to help reply. That is all part of developing.
The identical idea is true online. Simpler and the more pleasurable that a client’s experience with a site they are to remain there, navigate, create a purchase, or return down the line.
Consider your experiences online. Would you return to a site that did not seem on your device, took a moment to load, or just flat out refused to do the job. No way! That is one reason you need to make your internet design work correctly and also design that is reactive is the trick to doing so.
As of April 2015, Google considers whether a site is mobile-friendly within its search engine calculations. This means that are more inclined to rank highly in any search. So it is definitely in your interests to create your website responsive!
The way to execute a reactive design
Now that you know what reactive design is and why it is essential to business owners using a site, here’s a short responsive site how-to which could lead you through creating the necessary modifications to your website.
1. Grid Dimensions
Previously a website display was set out according to fixed dimensions. But designers have adapted to having grid system that is fluid.
The grid dimensions your website has proportional components rather than producing them one size. That makes it simple if sizing things for various displays: the components will respond to the dimensions of the display (in other words, the grid), not exactly the dimensions they are set to maintain pixels.
There is A grid split into columns, and widths and the heights are scaled. Nothing comes with a height or width. The proportions depend on how big the display is.
By changing the CSS along with code of your website, It’s possible to put principles for this particular grid.
2. Considerations for touchscreens
These days notebooks are built with touchscreens. This makes it crucial for sites that are responsive to be equipped in mind with touchscreen and mouse usage.
It’s easier to press using a fingertip on touchscreen apparatus, In case you’ve got a form which includes a menu built into the website layout. Furthermore, keep in mind that miniature elements (such as buttons) are rather hard to touch on smart phones, so attempt to execute images, calls for actions, and buttons which display with that in mind on all displays.
3. Decide what components to include on little displays
Design doesn’t mean copying your site just. You’re searching for the best consumer experience, which will indicate when somebody looks at your website on a display, that you want to leave out things.
Navigation menus could also be responsive. The menu could display enlarged on a huge display, but may be opened via this button on a little one.
You may put rules for including by changing the CSS along with code of your website or leaving elements. It will be surely appreciated by your customers, although this might take a while to install!
4. Consider pictures
Sizing may be among the facets of web designing that is responsive. You’ll have to create rules on your CSS that ascertain how images are managed on displays –if they handled another way, or eliminated, or are made to be the width.
5. Try out a pre-designed theme or design
You might require help in converting your website if you aren’t a designer in character.
If you don’t have enough time or the motivation to design a reactive site yourself, then you can”cheat” by using a motif or pre-designed design that does the job for you. It follows that is upgrading the colours to coincide with the requirements of your company.
There are, if you use WordPress. The same is applicable.
6. Outsource your job
You might find it impossible to find a motif to use if you do not use a ecommerce site or WordPress. Or you might need a layout that fits your requirements or business branding. Well, you could always hire someone to make something custom for you!
A web design firm like MediaOne has expertise designing websites that are responsive. In reality are responsive right from the box! This usually means you will not ever need to think about redesigning your website to be more mobile-friendly.
It is also possible to try choosing a freelancer because it is a sophisticated job to redesign your website, but be certain that you check their references. Websites that are responsive takes a solid background in web designing. This isn’t a place in which you would like to cut corners. Make space in your budget to cover for somebody to do this.
Design Is Essential for the long haul
Design is not a fad or preference that is momentary –it is a strategy which you want to put money into. Screens are still evolving, along with your site in order to satisfy the requirements of each browser.
By earning the layout of your website responsive, so you won’t need to be concerned about technologies that is new making your site obsolete. Your website is going to be well prepared. Which conserve your financial plan and also is not going to save your sanity .
Is Your Web Design Responsive Enough?
Many businesses consider creating a standalone mobile site. While this is fine from the perspective of the user, it could have some negative consequences for your SEO. Not only that, but mobile domains tend to be rather expensive to maintain.
Luckily, there are other options that could be considered. For instance, some companies choose to use responsive web design, or RWD, and accelerated mobile pages, or AMP. This allows you to create a site that is actually mobile-friendly.
Responsive Web Design
When using a responsive web design, it’s important to keep in mind that it does not take speed into consideration. Instead, RWD web pages focus on the use of fluid grids to render your images and the rest of your on-page elements in proportion to the device that they are being shown on.
And there are several advantages to this. First, it ensures that your site retains all of your content on a single URL. It’s more cost-effective than the standalone option. The sites can be accessed offline with the use of HTML5.
This is not to say that RWD doesn’t come with its own set of challenges. For example, it can take as much as 10 seconds to load if the site is not optimised properly. It’s not optimised for touch. Data visualisations must be optimised for smaller screens. For these reasons, many businesses prefer AMP and progressive web applications, or PWA.
Accelerated Mobile Pages
AMP is Google’s answer to slow loading times. You see, AMP is an HTML framework and it essentially works much like a content delivery network. It serves a bare-bones version of web pages in order to increase their speed. This solution is ideal for publishers who offer news articles as well as blog posts.
AMP is used by various search engines and close to a million domains. In fact, AdWords ads even use it. Publishers are also starting to switch over to it because it’s growing in speed by the day and becoming easier to use as well. To make AMP even more enticing, Google says that it prioritises these types of web pages for mobile news carousels. However, AMP also has its challenges.
While AMP is fast, it is loaded using Google’s cache. It is served as a completely different version of your original document. What this means is that your clicks will be much harder to track since they don’t occur on your site. Sure, AMP is great for those who offer informative blog posts, but your engagement may suffer. So if you’re an e-commerce store, you’ll have to make two different versions of your offers.
Progressive Web Apps
PWAs act like app but don’t require a download. They can be accessed through the browser and use CSS or Javascript, along with HTML. And this combination creates instant load speeds. When shared or bookmarked by the user, PWAs are linkable.
PWAs have several benefits. They can work offline. They offer universal access to all devices and browsers. Their load speeds are comparable to AMP. The transition between web pages are faster than the more traditional mobile domains. They feature interfaces that are native app-like. They’re both linkable and Indexable. Also, they allow you to send push notifications.
PWAs are popular amongst e-commerce stores because they ensure a faster checkout time and better user experience. They also increase engagement and conversions because you can continually communicate with your users. And this helps to improve your digital marketing strategy. However, it can be costly and difficult to implement. And many argue that you could just as easily invest in an app.
Flexible Grid-Based Layouts
Basic website design has features including logo, header, body, content, footer, navigation, sidebar, copyrights social links. An ordinary website of this kind will not work effectively on the different modernised mobile devices and screen resolutions. Creating a responsive mobile website will require you to limber your design by finding the points there is a significant change and allowing everything to squeeze and stretch around these points. Dividing the website content into various designs allows for the development of a flexible website for all devices
Flexible Media
In the past, websites contained barely any more than hyperlinks. Nowadays, it is unimaginable to have a site with no video, images, and hyperlinks. There exist a wide range of elements that can be incorporated into the website to make it more exciting, interesting, gripping and colourful. Responsive web design helps to create a fluid webpage with all the available interactive elements to provide information suiting all devices.
The ratio of the height and width of the image or video is one of the main issues in dealing with flexible media. The image or video increases in size regarding both width and length along with the viewport. Some elements can be used to solve the width issue, but this is not possible for the height. Flexible images are preferable than the iframes loaded by a browser from another web page as they run more responsibly. There is no clue on how tall or wide the frame elements are. For perfect results, get the image within the container size, set the width to max width to prevent the image from growing beyond that specified size.
Media Queries
Responsive web design functions on all the devices and browsers. All the browser releases should offer support to media queries in various ways. You may also use enabled javascript polyfills technique to have the website developers provide necessary web technologies to the website users.
So Which is Best?
Each of these options has their own advantages and should be considered carefully. AMP is perfect for publishers who want to drive more traffic to a publication or blog. There have been many Singapore business owners who’ve had a hard time implementing AMP because a lot of CMS’s don’t offer a plug-in. Conversely, PWAs work across every browser, and enhancements have secured them from unwanted content and viruses.
When it comes to speed, both are pretty similar. PWAs and AMPs are both extremely fast. The only major difference is that the PWAs’ navigation speed and web pages will be hosted in this particular format.
When it comes to ranking, it’s possible that AMP is considered to be a signal. But if PWAs offers a close to identical loading speeds, it’s very unlikely that AMP has an advantage over PWAs. PWAs tend to shine when it comes to web design perspective. AMP strips many of the graphical and interface elements from the original design while PWAs offer all of these elements in an app-like display and this makes for a user-friendly experience. Also, PWAs are responsive to various browsers and react to user permissions in order to create smooth checkout experiences.
The Verdict
Ultimately, if you want to make sure that users have the best experience and that you get the most engagement, you should combine these two options. As AMP articles become faster and more visible in search it works perfectly with the PWAs app-like interface. Not only will combining these two increase user signals but it will also offer a better user experience overall.
It is crucial for your website to have a responsive web design. This has become more significant after the Google announcement rule for all sites to be accessible to all devices .in a competitive online market like Singapore, a responsive website is essential to help compete with other businesses in your niche. If your site is not responsive enough, the above-discussed tips will help you to make it highly responsive. You can also visit a web design and development agency in Singapore today to get the most out of your online marketing business.
In the past years, Google has made it a point to tout the importance of mobile-friendliness. However, this year they have taken it a step further by announcing their mobile-first indexing. And this means that it’s no longer an option that you make your site accessible to all devices–it’s a must.
Sure, it’s important to have a web design that is responsive. But this can only take your digital marketing so far. If you would like to compete with others in your niche, then you’re going to have to institute new configurations. Talk to your web design company about AMP and PWA. This is especially the case for e-commerce platforms. If you want to get the most out of your marketing, consider combining the two.
How to Test Your Website for Mobile Responsiveness
Mobile responsiveness is about giving mobile users the same experience they would get from using a laptop or desktop, if not better.
That is why your website needs to be tested on different browsers, screen sizes, and modes – portrait, landscape, etc.
Recommended Tool
LambdaTest LT Browser
LambdaTest LT is a developer-oriented web browser that provides developers with a workspace to test their websites for mobile responsiveness over different device’s viewports.
The browser was designed to simplify the daily testing tasks of web developers and testers.
It comes with the following list of features:
- Instant test on different device viewports
- Create a custom device and use it to test your website
- Debug your website on different viewports, side-by-side
- Local website testing
- Take videos and screenshots of your website and share them with the rest of your team
Mobile Responsive Testing Challenges
The story doesn’t end with you incorporating a responsive design. You have to test its implementation and make sure everything works fine on all devices.
You have to test the content, videos, links, images, etc. Be sure to test them all for appearance before you can go ahead and launch your website.
And just across devices but on different operating systems and browsers, as well.
Please note: just because your website works great on Android that doesn’t mean it will also work great on iOS or windows.
The Importance of Testing Your Website for Responsiveness
Your website content is meant to promote your business. So, if your site doesn’t appeal to your site’s visitors, then that will reflect poorly on your business performance.
So, developing a mobile-friendly website isn’t the end of the story. You have to check and confirm everything to make sure you’re giving your customers a quality, robust, and user-friendly website.
4 key reasons to test your website for responsiveness
Loads Fine on Different Devices, Operating Systems, and Browsers
You have to verify your site’s content and make sure it works just fine on different screen-sized mobile devices, browsers, operating systems. Just because your site is perfect on a particular device or browser doesn’t mean it will be perfect on all others.
Robustness (Same Experience Across Different Devices)
You have to make sure your website takes the same amount of time to load across different devices, browsers, and operating systems. It should not be slow on one device and faster on another.
And regardless of the device being used to load the site, the experience must feel pretty much the same.
Navigation
One common mistake you’re likely to encounter while testing your mobile website for responsiveness is to find out that it doesn’t load as expected when accessed by a different browser or device. At times, it may happen that the links aren’t opening or the images aren’t loading or the website gets timed out when you try to navigate it.
Image and Video Testing
While testing your website for responsiveness, all images and videos must be tested to make sure they’re all loading as expected on different devices, browsers, etc.
Don’t be surprised when you find out that the same video that plays flawlessly on an Android device doesn’t do the same on an iOS device.
Examples of Test Cases for Mobile Responsiveness
While testing a website for responsiveness, the tester usually starts by resizing it on different devices, browsers, screens, etc. But there’s a whole lot more that needs to be tested than just that.
Here are some of the test cases to apply to all the testbed matrices:
- Verify that your content fits perfectly on the screen – and that it’s not distorted or cut-out
- Verify that your videos load fine and there’s no case of broken links
- Verify that your website colours, texts, and fonts are the same across devices
- Verify that zooming out doesn’t distort your page content, images, or videos
- Verify that fast scrolling doesn’t in any way distort your content
- Verify that all the links are working just fine and that they’re all leading to the right page
- Verify that the webpage isn’t taking too long to load or getting timed out in the process
- Verify that changing your mode from portrait to landscape and vice versa adjusts your content accordingly
- Verify that all your image formats (.png, .jpg, gif, etc) are showing as expected
- Verify that your links are still clickable when the site loads or zooms on a small screen
- Verify if navigating between different pages distorts your content
Tools for Testing Your Website for Mobile Responsiveness
A simple Google search on tools for testing your website for mobile responsiveness should present a long list of possible tools you can use.
When choosing a tool, we suggest you go with one that allows you to test for a variety of devices, browsers, operating system, and so on.
You certainly do not want to get a different tool when testing for a different device, browser, or operating system.
The point is to go with a tool that can cover multiple testbeds.
10 Tools You Can Use to Test Your Website and See if It’s Mobile Friendly
1# Responsinator
The beauty of using Responsinator to test your site for responsiveness lies in its simplicity. The tool comes with one of the most intuitive interfaces you’ll ever come across online.
All you have to do is visit the website and enter your website’s URL and hit “GO.” This web-based tool will work its magic and show you how your website renders on different types of screens and sizes.
2# Screenfly
Screenfly is another free tool that’s been specifically designed to test your website for responsiveness.
The tool has been around for ages and has grown to be among the most popular and effective tools for testing mobile responsiveness.
Simple. Just visit the website and enter your website’s URL. You’ll be prompted to pick a device and choose a screen size from the options provided to find out how your website functions on it.
With this tool, you can test your website for desktop computers, smartphones, television, and tablets.
3# Google DevTools Device Mode
DevTools’ Device Mode is the easiest way to simulate mobile devices on Chrome browser.
You can use it to find out how your site loads and appears across different devices and resolutions, Retina screens included.
It’s, however, worth noting that you cannot simulate device inputs such as geolocation, touch, and device orientation using this tool.
4# Google Resizer
Google Resizer enables web developers and designers to test their websites for responsiveness.
With this tool, designers can test their design materials across different devices and platforms and identify breakpoints. Rather than designing and hoping for the best, this tool shows you, in real-time, if your website is recursive for mobile.
5# Ghostlab
Ghostlab is a paid-for, web-based website testing tool that allows you to test your website on multiple browsers and devices, all at once.
Just test your website on one device or browser, and all the other browsers and devices will mirror your action, whether you’re reloading your website, filling out a form, or selecting a button.
6# Browser Stack
Browser is a full-featured mobile testing tool. It’s a paid app that allows you to access over 1000 mobile and desktop browsers for testing your website – a list they’re constantly updating based on usage statistics and market trends.
Among those using this app to test their platforms, there’s Twitter, Airbnb, Mastercard, and Microsoft.
7# Cross Browser Testing
If we were to single out Browser Stack’s closest rival then it will be Cross Browser Testing.
It’s an all-in-one platform that offers to test your website across 1500 browsers and devices for responsiveness.
With this tool, you can compare screens visually, run parallel automated web tests, and even interact with your website on real-world devices.
The tool also allows you to remotely debug your website as you go.
8# Responsive Design Checker
Responsive Design checker features several pre-set screen sizes and custom size options. The only thing missing in comparison to most of the tools we’ve mentioned is, the numbered ruler that appears at the top of the screen.
Just visit the site and enter your website’s URL to see how it renders on different devices.
9# Design Modo
Design Modo is a widely used website and email builder that offers a free responsive website testing tool as part of the platform.
The platform has all the website building tools you’ll ever need, with a dragging button to show how your design changes at different viewports.
Of course, this is part of their lead generation strategy, but the tool comes in handy when you’re testing your site for responsiveness.
10# Am I Responsive?
AmIresponsive is similar to Responsinator in so many ways. It’s a simple site designed to help you test your site on different devices.
On the upside, you can also use it to screenshot your site and add it to your portfolio.
It goes without mentioning that each of the generated screens can be scrolled independently.
How Much Does It Cost to Make Your Site Mobile-friendly?
The question attracts an obvious answer, “it depends.”
But one thing we’re sure of is that it won’t cost you more than you would have paid for not having a mobile-friendly website.
When designing a website, a responsive design may cost you an additional 30%-50% of the original price you pay.
Designing a responsive e-commerce store on the other hand tends to cost between $5000 and $25000 depending on how complex the project is.
5 Reasons Why Your Website Isn’t Mobile-friendly
Take a minute to think of all the possible reasons your website doesn’t work well on mobile.
We’ve identified 5 of these culprits, as listed below:
1# Your Site isn’t Responsive
Let’s start with the most obvious reason. One of the reasons you’re having a hard time getting your site to load on mobile is that you haven’t made any effort to make it resize itself to different screen sizes.
Responsive design isn’t the only way to optimise your website for mobile. But it makes a good starting point, especially from an SEO perspective.
The biggest mistake you’ll ever do, as a developer, is designing your website for desktop and then scaling it down for a smaller screen size. Your design might load just fine on mobile but it won’t be intuitive enough. A better approach would be to design the website with all the devices in mind.
So, how do you make your website responsive?
You might want to take a full course on this if you’re a web developer looking to start creating responsive websites.
But if you’re a web developer who doesn’t want to dive in too deep or learn anything at the code level, then what you need is to develop a solid understanding of the basic principles defining a responsive design to better manage your design team.
A responsive design must:
- Limit horizontal scrolling, unless otherwise
- Serve the same content across all devices
- Ensure text is clear enough to be read on any device, in terms of contrast, size, colour, etc.
- Have an intuitive navigation
- Ensure its content is visible under different light conditions (both indoors and outdoors).
- Optimised for mobile touch (clickable elements must be large enough to accommodate finger touch)
- Provide a consistent experience across all devices. When a user moves from one device to another, everything must feel familiar to them if they have ever interacted with the website on a different device
2# You have Yet to Optimise the Website for Mobile-first Indexing
It bears repeating that mobile responsiveness isn’t the only way to optimise your site for mobile-friendliness.
And has it ever occurred to you that many brands are developing separate websites for mobile?
A few years ago, Google made it official that they had changed how they index webpages to reflect the ongoing trend, where most online searches were being carried out on mobile devices.
They decided to prioritise mobile experiences. By that we mean, they started showing the mobile version of a website by default and only showing the desktop version where the mobile version was missing.
So, how do you optimise your site for mobile-first indexing?
- You must first ensure that both your desktop and mobile pages have the same content
- Make sure both pages contain necessary structured data
- Both pages should be verified in the Google search console
- Rel=hreflang tags must include separate URLs for desktop and mobile
- Make sure your website can handle the increased crawl rate for your mobile website
- Use correct rel=canonical and rel=alternate links between desktop and mobile versions of your website
3# Slow Loading
Slow loading is the number one killer of conversion. Online users are anything, but patient.
If your website doesn’t load in under 3 seconds, they’ll exit your website and check out with your competitors.
Studies have confirmed this.
But despite all the information floating around about slow loading websites and how they affect conversion, a majority of websites out there have yet to deliver on this performance.
Turns out the average loading speed of websites out there still hangs at 15 seconds on mobile when the recommended speed is less than 3 seconds – and yes, on a 3G network.
So, how do you reduce your website’s loading time?
- Make fewer HTTP requests to your server
- Compress your website’s images
- Use clean code
- Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript codes
- Avoid unnecessary requests
- Reduce JavaScript code
- Avoid using too many web fonts
- Use CDN when targeting global/international audiences
- Avoid using too many plugins
- Implement caching
- Add AMP to your site
4# Poor Mobile UX
Your mobile navigation menu can either make or break your website. It’s easy to get it right when you have a small website. All you have to do is duplicate your desktop menu on your website’s mobile version.
But with a larger website? That’s where things get a little trickier.
The general rule of thumb is that users shouldn’t need to make more than three clicks to get to any page.
That’s to say your menu shouldn’t get to third-tier navigation levels.
If this problem transferred to your mobile site, that means the user will be spending more time scrolling through the menu trying to get to the right page.
Also, if you amend the page to only include the top tier level, you’ll be blocking the user from getting to the pages at the lower level.
So, what do you do?
Well, you’ve probably heard of the hamburger design. It’s a good approach but it does come with its share of misses – starting with the fact that it hides the menu from being seen by mobile users.
An alternative approach would be to use fixed “tap bars”—which again comes with its share of flaws.
5# You’re Using Popups
Many websites use interstitials or overlays to get users to sign up for the newsletters, promote their brand app, or give a special offer.
These overlays may work well on desktops. But on mobile, they are frustrating, often obscuring the user from viewing your content.
So, how do you Implement User-friendly Popups?
- Set a delay time for the popups so users can have time to engage with your content before they show
- Use exit popups that only display when the user plans to exit your site
- Use fixed-position banners instead
- Make the X icon visible enough so users can easily close the popups when they feel like
- Implement a live chat or chatbot
- Place your CTAs on your page and blog posts instead of relying on popups
- Use notifications instead
