Must have mobile friendly web design features that help to stay tuned with the trend
Reaching out for the mobile phone has now become so much of a natural reflex of humans that they grab their phones even when they are bored and tired or hungry and curious.
We depend heavily on mobile phones and other similar mobile devices to socialize, get directions, obtain information for making purchasing decisions, and many more reasons that help to optimize our lives. Using mobile devices for shopping and engaging with brands has become commonplace, and it has changed the way we design websites that must have enough features to support the varied needs of the modern lifestyle. The volume of mobile searches has exceeded desktop searches and the recent changes or updates of the Google algorithm point to the fact that more value is being attached to website design.
Websites must be responsive so that it displays on the varied screen sizes of mobile devices with the same ease as on desktops and laptops. Moreover, the design must-have features that increase visibility across all web media and different browsers. The website must not only be attractive aesthetically but also so much user-friendly that it would lead to higher user engagement and improve conversions and revenue for the business.
According to leading website development agencies, the following mobile-friendly design features are must-haves for responsive web design.
Menu display style
To make it comfortable for users to move across the website, navigation plays a critical role, and designers must ensure that users can move around the site smoothly and intuitively without stuttering. Navigation depends mainly on the way the menu displays on the screen, and to suit the convenience of responsive design, the use of a hamburger menu has been the norm. The hamburger menu makes it easy to conceal the navigation points of the website until the time users feel like invoking it. However, over the past few years, the trend of using the hamburger menu is changing. It is making way for icons located at the top or the bottom of the page. Users are familiar with what the icons mean, and using a simple layout of the icon can ease the navigation to a great extent.
Color palettes
Being careful in using color schemes during web design helps to stick to the current best practice that revolves around the ‘less is more’ approach that mobile websites and apps are using extensively. Sticking to some distinctive colors that represent the brand ensures that users can quickly relate to it and recall the brand. Never make the mistake of changing the color scheme of your brand. To get the most from the color scheme, you must use softer and toned-down colors of the brand and lots of white space that relieves the eyes and make the colors appear more attractive.
Since mobile users scroll screens much faster than desktops during reading, you must be very cautious with color usage. The colors used as pop-ups should make users pause to consume the information. Choose colors strategically to draw the users’ attention to the most important content.
Simple and diffused background
The themes and backgrounds of the design play a significant role in defining the brand and making users familiar with it besides enhancing the aesthetic value of the design. Retaining these elements of design when users are viewing the website on mobile devices helps to improve user engagement. To prevent the backgrounds and images from becoming too dominant, that can interfere with the primary focus of viewers on the navigation features; you can make it blurred and diffused instead of removing them. Users can quickly identify the website that they are familiar with, which increases user engagement.
Material design and functional animations
More and more website designs are making use of the functional animations which expose users to direct visualization and enhance the appeal of websites. These visualizations help users to realize what value they can derive from your business. Animated elements not only make navigation of mobile websites easier but create a rich experience for users. You can incorporate these designs into your material design that enhances the usability of mobile websites. Layering and gradients are the elements dominant in material design that help in the faster loading of websites.
Swiping functionality and gestures
Pinch in, pinch out, touching, double touching, touch, and drag and hold and drag are the elements of design for incorporating swiping functionalities and multiple gestures that add more convenience to users during navigation. As users spend more time viewing websites on mobile devices, they quickly become familiar with different features. Incorporating commonly used gestures on mobile-friendly websites will enhance the attraction of the site.
Intuitive interface
Regardless of the kind of device people use, they want to derive the satisfaction of navigating the website confidently by relying on intuitive design. Intuitive design liberates users from depending on guesswork or sixth sense to decide what would be the most natural action in using a specific device. The interface of the website must be familiar to users right from the first visit to the site. Comfort in navigation goes a long way in creating user engagement because the more comfortable they feel in using the website, the longer time they would spend on it. This is not a simple process, and it takes a lot of skill and knowledge to create an intuitive interface that your users will love. That’s why it’s always good to explore additional options, like going with one of the top app development companies that can do all of the heavy liftings for you.
Card design
Sticking to the basics of web design like the card design helps to divide the content into smaller chunks so that it displays well on the small screen and is easy for users to scroll through. This element of design adds the required functionality to aid the viewing of different multimedia aspects of the website and to skip through to the desired information without wasting time.
Incorporate location technology
Incorporating location services in the website design improves the user experience significantly because it makes it easy to gather information based on the user’s location. Although there were concerns about privacy about incorporating location technology in web design during the initial stages, the convenience of using the technology has put to rest all debate. By using the location of users, businesses too benefit by serving users according to their expectations.
Going ahead, website design is set to change again to meet the challenges of wearable technology.