Responsive Design — Ensure the most satisfying user experiences for your customers
Mobile-First? Yes, but don’t forget that we have tablets, laptops, TVs, and smartwatches to think about too.
Have you ever found yourself browsing the web that looks just fine on your laptop but then went all messed up when switching onto the mobile phone? Frustrating and annoying isn’t it?
But for E-commerce businesses, this little inconvenience might just chase away all the customers and cost them more than they’ve thought.
Let’s think about it, how many devices do you have at home?
Me, I have an iPhone, Mac Book Air, and an iPad. My boyfriend, an android guy, has a Google Pixel phone, Microsoft Surface Pro, and a PC that he built himself.
How can the webpage adjust itself to all the different screen sizes, operating systems, and devices? There’s no way that each of the devices has its own specific design… wouldn’t that be costly and too much work?
The Approach
It turns out there is an approach called Responsive Design, where the design and development respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform, and orientation.
What exactly does that mean?
To create a single, flexible web design that looks good on all devices. That automatically stretches or shrinks to fit the screen.
The Technicalities
We might need a little more concentration for this part since we’re diving into 3 core principles of responsive design.
First, Fluid Grid System, has a flexible content width that goes edge to edge as per the screen size. The columns either grow or shrink to adapt to the available space.
The Media Queries that detect the browsing device’s dimensions and make your design appear appropriately. (it has to do with coding… I think)
Lastly, Fluid Image Use. Unlike text, images aren’t naturally fluid. So CSS command is needed to be applied. (…coding again)
Phew… it was nice to know these technical terms.
The Tools
As I was doing the research on this topic, I stumbled across Adobe Experience Cloud which seems to be the all-in-one solution for businesses to manage their customer experience.
It’s AI-powered and helps ensure the best interactions and real-time insights for businesses to increase customer engagement. Basically, it says to help create personalized experiences for each and every customer!
I’d love a chance to have a try at it. Wouldn’t you too?
I think the fact that the responsiveness of the website has become a requirement for all E-commerce is the reason I how enjoyable browsing through my mobile phone is now.
Now that I think back, the web pages on the mobile phone used to be horrible! Thank you to all the geniuses that came up with this Responsive Design!
