We know the number of smartphone users is growing at an astounding rate globally with more people than ever before using their phones to access the web. In fact, browsing the web on the desktop and laptop has failed to keep pace in the popularity of hand-held devices particularly phones.

More so, smartphones are now driving the major chunk of web traffic and that’s why businesses across the world are taking note of the scenario to keep pace with the trends around.  It’s now become important for websites to meet up the standards and stay mobile-optimized to meet the users’ ever-changing needs.

That’s where best practices for responsive web design come into focus so that websites could offer the best possible experiences to users across devices.

Here are some best practices for responsive web design in 2020 –

1. Minimize and prioritize

Mobile devices generally don’t offer users the space to work freely with content and imagery. On the other hand, it’s quite easy with the desktop website page where one is able to break down the text or information and reach the desired part of the page smoothly. So, it would always be a mistake to create a desktop website and then think of removing its functionality to make it more effective on mobile devices.  

On the contrary, the good strategy would be to first know the best experience on mobile and then take the design to a desktop layout and know better how to increase the user experience. So, it’s always better to minimize and prioritize certain sections and pages that are occupying more spaces than desired on mobile devices.  

2. Use scalable vector graphics (SVGs)

If your responsive design is going to use icons or illustration, then SVGs or Scalable Vector Graphics should be a must-have option. After all, SUVs are truly scalable quite unlike other popular formats such as PNG or JPG. When scalable vector graphics are used, you can always be sure of the resolution and pixelation of any icon or graphic in your design. 

This is how your site will maintain a uniformly classy and polished look no matter on which device it’s viewed on. In addition, your site will load faster because the file size of SUVs is smaller compared to other standard formats.   

3. Standardize clickable areas and buttons

Having standard clickable areas and buttons is one of the best responsive design practices in 2020 as we need to understand how users prefer a larger interactive area to browse and search on mobile. That’s why you need to make sure that any clickable element on a mobile device has not less than 48 pixels height. 

That’s why all your buttons, form inputs, navigation links, and card layouts need to be optimized to give users a larger area and better experience on mobile devices. By using this step, you can cut back on the frustration level felt by users and also boost engagement rates easily.   

4. Responsive imagery

You should understand that well how the need for image size would vary for different devices. So, it would be a mistake to have the same image size for a desktop page and for the mobile version of the page. For mobile devices, the image size would be about one-third of the desktop to give users the best possible viewing experience. 

So, rather than loading the large resolution image and using them for all devices, you should rather use two different versions, one each for mobile and desktop, to enable the desired responsive experience. This will definitely help your mobile site load faster than it would otherwise.

5. Focus on typography

When it comes to the legibility of a website, it’s always apt to put more focus is needed for mobile users and their readability needs rather than keeping all devices and platforms in mind. The target should be to ensure that the content is easy to read and optimized according to the device size.   

If the content is not optimized, visitors are bound to squint and click away which is never a good thing for your conversion rates. So, you need to focus on the typefaces, balance the font sizes and body heading for easy reading. You can always trust a top web designing company to get the best result with responsive design.