Tag Archives: visitors

What Is the Fastest Web Hosting

Posted on July 9, 2019 by Hosting

The post What Is the Fastest Web Hosting appeared first on HostGator Blog . If you have a slow loading website, you’re killing your site before it’s even had a chance to succeed.  Today, having a fast web host is no longer an option. It’s a necessity. With a slow loading site you’ll be negatively influencing your search engine rankings, impairing your user experience, and likely losing a lot of potential sales.  But all the onsite optimization in the world won’t matter if your web host is slow.  While on-page improvements like image optimization will make a huge difference, your web host sets the stage for your site speed. You can think of your hosting company as either making it easier or harder to achieve blazing fast loading speeds.  Below we not only examine why having a fast loading website is so important, but we also show you what to look for in fast web hosting services .  Why You Need a Fast Web Host If you didn’t hear the news, attention spans are down . You can’t expect your users to sit around and wait for your site to load. In fact, if your site takes longer than 2 seconds, then they’ll click the back button and head over to one of your competitors. Your web host can either greatly enhance your site speed or make it very difficult to achieve even subpar loading speeds. Here are some of the biggest reasons you’ll want fast web hosting services behind you: 1. Rank Higher in the Search Engine Rankings Google loves websites that load fast. Think about it, Google’s mission is to provide search engine users with the most relevant and highest quality search results.  When your site loads slowly, your visitors are immediately put off. They start moving their mouse (or trackpad) towards the back button as fast as possible.  Site loading speed is a Google ranking factor . Keep in mind that it’s not a big one, but everything adds up when it comes to SEO. Plus, if your site takes too long to load, then Google will send crawlers to your website less often. So, they won’t know if you’ve published that new blog post you’ve spent hours on. Beyond the ranking factor impact, having a slow loading website will also influence user experience factors like your bounce rate . Having a very high bounce rate will signal to Google that your site is low-quality, so you can say goodbye to those hard-earned rankings.  2. Offer a Positive User Experience If you want your site to succeed in the long-term, then you need to be creating a positive experience for your visitors.  Face it, the web is a crowded place, so if you’re looking to stand out, a great way to do that is with your user experience. Create a super enjoyable experience for your visitors and you’ll be having visitors come back to your site again and again (and maybe tell their friends about it too!). As you’ve already seen, today’s internet users are impatient. We all are. We all expect things to happen instantly. So, if your site fails to achieve this expectation you’re going to have a lot of disappointed visitors on your hands.  Also, as we mentioned above, when you create a great user experience you’ll improve key website stats like your bounce rate and dwell time, which suggest a positive user experience . This will have a compounding effect of ensuring it’s easier for your site to rank, and helping turn visitors into customers, subscribers, and more.  3. Create a Stellar First Impression The moment a visitor lands on your website they’re judging you. This doesn’t mean you need to feel self-conscious. It’s something we all do.  Visitors are immediately making judgments about your site. Should they trust you? Is this site worth their time? Are you a professional? These judgments happen instantly. One of the best ways to help bring visitors over to your side is to have a fast loading website.  Sure, there are important elements of your site that need to be in place too. But, users tend to view fast loading sites as more trustworthy. On the other hand, when your site loads slowly, it does the exact opposite of inspiring confidence. In fact, if your site loads too slowly, your visitors may never return again.  4. Improve Your Conversions Most people will leave your site and never return again if it loads slowly. According to some experts , 40% of people will abandon your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.  So, let’s say your site gets 10,000 visitors per month. With a slow loading site, 4,000 of those visitors will leave your site! That’s 4,000 visitors who could have become customers.  If your site is generating revenue, then any lost visitor is a potentially lost customer. Of course, not every website visitor will buy something from you. But, losing 40% of your visitors due to a fixable problem with site loading isn’t something you’ll want to experience. The more traffic your site gets the more tragic this figure becomes.  5. Make Speed Optimization Easier Finally, when you choose a fast hosting services you’re making your life as a webmaster so much easier. No matter what kind of hosting plan you’re on there are steps you can take to help get the highest performance out of your site. But, if you’re on a slow loading web host, even big changes will only lead to very small improvements. It’ll be near impossible to overcome the slow loading baseline that’s set by your host.  Some web hosts are so blazing fast that they deliver incredible loading speeds without any onsite speed optimization. In an ideal world you’ll have a host that values speed, along with having proper onsite optimization to truly get the highest levels of performance out of your site.  What to Look for in a Fast Web Host Now that you understand the importance of having a fast loading website let’s look at the things you should look for in a web host . Note that some of the factors are actual features of a hosting company while others are more dependant on the needs of your site.  The following factors will help you find a host with the fastest web hosting:  1. Choosing the Right Plan  One of the biggest influences on the performance of your site is choosing the right type of hosting and plan for your needs. For example, if you’re on a basic shared hosting plan, but your site gets a large volume of monthly traffic, then this will probably lead to poor performance. There’s no way around it.  It’s important to choose a host that can actually support your website needs. For most hosting plans there are limits, and when you hit these your site performance is going to suffer.  First, ensure that you choose a hosting plan that can support your existing traffic and storage levels while giving you space to grow or upgrade your plan. Second, consider choosing a type of hosting that’s best suited to your site. For example, if you run a WordPress site whose traffic levels are increasing, then you might want to consider moving to WordPress hosting .  2. Server Location One thing that’s typically overlooked is the actual physical location of the servers. If you primarily get traffic from the UK, but your servers are based in Los Angeles, then your loading times won’t be as fast as they could be. If you have the opportunity to select the location of your servers, then choose a location that’s the closest to your website visitors and not your physical location.  If you can’t select this, then at least make sure there’s a bundled CDN, or you have the opportunity to utilize one.  3. Quality Server Hardware The server hardware will also influence your site’s performance. Look for a host that uses the latest web server hardware technology, not simply a host that’s trying to get by with older server hardware.  Typically, the higher the level of your plan the better web server hardware you’ll have access to. This includes things like the quality of the processors, integrated caching, unlimited bandwidth, along with support for faster software or program updates, like PHP 7.  4. Type of Drives When you purchase hosting services you’re basically buying a place to store your site’s files. If possible, try to find a host that uses Solid State Drives (SSDs) . This is an upgrade from the traditional HDD drives. SSDs have a much higher level of performance and can execute server commands at a much faster rate.  5. Bundled CDN Using a CDN will help your site load faster across the board. With a CDN behind you, cached versions of your site will be stored on different servers across the globe. Whenever a visitor accesses your site, they’ll be served a version of your site from a server that’s in the closest physical proximity.  Choosing the Fastest Web Host for Your Needs Even though speed is important, there’s a lot more that goes into choosing a web host than just evaluating speed. Here are a few factors you’ll want to look for along with fast performance:  1. Fits Your Budget Even if you’ve found the fastest web host in the world, it won’t matter if you can’t afford it. Usually, a VPS or dedicated server plan will be faster than a shared hosting plan.  You’ll need to find the fastest form of hosting available within your budget. In time, as the size of your site and traffic levels grow you can upgrade to more expensive forms of hosting that will also offer upgrades in performance.  2. Quality of Support A rock-solid customer support team should be mandatory when deciding between different web hosting providers. The chances are high that you’ll need to reach out to support at some time to help you resolve an issue regarding your hosting or your website. You’ll want to look for a support team that offers customer support in your preferred channel, along with actually being responsive and helpful. When an issue arises with your website you’ll want to be confident you can get it resolved as quickly as possible.  3. Ability to Grow With You Chances are your site will grow in time and so will your hosting needs. Even if you’re building out your first site you’ll want to choose a hosting company that can grow with you. This means you should be on the lookout for hosts that offer multiple plans, as well as, multiple forms of hosting services.  4. Bundled Tools and Features When looking for a host make sure they can meet all of your needs, not just your need for speed.  For example, maybe you want a host that allows you to manage and send email, or you know you want to use cPanel to manage your web server, or you want a host that has a website builder . Take stock of your additional needs before you begin researching and exploring different web hosting services..  5. High Level of Reliability Site uptime is incredibly important. Even if your site loads in 10ms, this won’t matter if it’s offline all the time. Look for a host that offers an uptime guarantee of 99.99%.  This uptime percentage refers to the percentage of time that your site will be online. This might not seem crucially important, but think about it from the perspective of a visitor who comes to your site while it’s offline.  Or, a visitor who came to your site with the intention of making a purchase, but all they see is an offline site.  Look for a host that offers a high level of uptime, and even an uptime guarantee if the time your site is offline drops below their baseline percentage. Choose a Fast Web Host for Your Website Hopefully, you have a better understanding of why having the fastest web hosting is very important. With a low loading host behind you, you’re going to have an uphill battle from the very beginning.  By using the information above you’ll be on your way towards finding the best blazing-fast web hosting package for your website. Whether you go for shared hosting, dedicated server hosting , or any of our other web hosting packages, our team at HostGator will help you find the best service for you and your website. If you’re looking for a web host that values load time speed and also checks all the boxes above, then explore HostGator’s hosting plans today. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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How to Create a Style Guide for Your Website in 5 Steps

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Hosting

The post How to Create a Style Guide for Your Website in 5 Steps appeared first on HostGator Blog . Websites are online storefronts for small businesses. Because they play a pivotal role in the customer experience, your team must make it a priority. A style guide helps your small business develop a cohesive look for your website. Without a clear branding style, customers will disengage and leave your site. Style guides also ensure there aren’t any discrepancies in your branding strategy. Let’s streamline your online presence. Here are 5 elements to consider in your website style guide. 1. Brand Voice Branding is the overall perception of your small business. It’s how you differentiate your products and services from others in the market. Brand voice is part of building your website. You get to show visitors your brand personality and unique qualities. Voice can range from casual and calm to vibrant and risky. In the  chart below , each voice characteristic corresponds with suggested actions (and inactions) for businesses. For instance, a company aiming for an authentic voice should portray honesty and ownership of mistakes and stay away from marketing jargon. A description of your brand voice isn’t always enough. When developing your style guide, you also should include explicit examples for your team to follow. This tactic eliminates any uncertainty when posting copy to your site. Web design affects many internal departments. Your sales team needs to know the appropriate messaging to secure customers. The finance team is interested in the actual costs, and human resources wants to attract new employees. Therefore, it’s helpful to get input from your entire team when making key brand decisions. Choose a brand voice that inspires your customers. Then, you can start developing a website that represents your brand story.   2. Navigation Laying out your website is just as critical as selecting the right words and images. When visitors land on your site, they should easily tell where to go next. It’s vital that your team craft a straightforward roadmap for their visit. For starters, keep your main heading options under six. Too many choices can overwhelm visitors and can cause them to take no action at all. Drop-down  menus also can offer structure, giving visitors access to additional pages without multiple clicks. When mapping out your navigation, conduct customer research and examine data from conversion optimization tools like heatmaps. You’ll want to begin with what’s important. Andy Crestodina , the co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media, provides his perspective: “In website navigation, just like any list, items at the beginning and the end are most effective, because this is where attention and retention are highest. Always seek to put the things that are most important to visitors in the most visually prominent places.” Effective navigation helps customers buy your products. So, streamline the navigation bar to increase engagement.   3. Colors Red, blue, purple, yellow. The colors on your website matter to your visitors. They can either spark an invitation to stay or ignite a reaction to leave your site immediately. Colors influence consumers’ perceptions of your brand. While each color represents something different for every individual, humans do recognize specific colors to represent different emotions. Yet, studies recommend that companies select colors that support the brand personality they want to portray, instead of aligning with stereotypical color associations. Your team then can add meaning to the chosen colors through other branding aspects. The  diagram below shows the connection between a color and a meaning. For example, lime green can translate into competence with a brand personality of reliability and intelligence. Colors relay an essential message your customers. Don’t force your brand to adhere to the traditional norms of what a color embodies. Find the right palette for your small business.   4. Fonts Fonts are usually the last thing on a small business owner’s mind. However, fonts help communicate your brand’s voice. Script fonts can portray a young, playful company, while a slab font can mean a bold, established brand. Google Fonts is an interactive library of more than 900 fonts. It’s an easy-to-use tool to experiment with fonts and compare your top choices. Avoid fonts that aren’t legible or clear. Consumers shouldn’t have to squint their eyes to read your text or take a second look just to be certain. Jill Chongva , a WordPress website designer, says: “It’s best to use fonts that complement each other and work together without being jarring for the reader. This usually means choosing a combination of a serif font and a sans serif font that don’t fight for the reader’s attention.” It’s also wise to not select fonts similar to well-known brands, like Coca-Cola or Nike. You want a distinct font that separates your small business from the competition. What font expresses your brand? Do your research and select one that will grab your consumers’ attention.   5. Images Images impact how consumers see your small business. With a couple of pictures, buyers can quickly determine whether they can see themselves with your product. In your style guide, outline the type of images that are acceptable for brand promotion. Specify the recommended file format and display size. You also may want to limit the number of images per page—leaving some white space. That way, your visitors don’t get bombarded with too many visuals at once. Invest in quality product photography . You want images that display the fine details of your product. For example, if you sell purses, consumers should see every pattern design. The image should give them a sense of how the product would look and feel in real life. Customers can become accustomed to the same old stock photos. For your website to stand out, you may want to shoot your own photos. Most smartphones are capable of taking high-quality pictures. So, encourage your team to share their photos from the last company retreat or team-building outing. Choose your images carefully. The image specifications make a huge difference for your website.   Your Website’s Style Guide Websites are open invitations for customers to learn about your small business. Style guides create a roadmap to establish your brand. With the right elements, your team can build a better customer experience. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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How and Why to Keep Your Website Fresh

Posted on May 9, 2019 by Hosting

The post How and Why to Keep Your Website Fresh appeared first on HostGator Blog . Want to keep visitors coming back to your site? Keep it fresh. Stale content, outdated site technology, and passé design can cause visitors to move on in search of more timely information, a faster-loading site, or a site that doesn’t look like a time capsule from a bygone era. Freshness can help you earn new visitors, too. Frequently updated content gets crawled more often by search-engine bots, so your site is less likely to get buried by newer items in search results. Keeping up with the latest technical standards, like fast-loading pages and mobile-friendly design, can help your site’s search results performance, too. 1. Keep Website Content Fresh with a Content Calendar Content is what visitors come to your site for, whether it’s new blog posts, photos, videos, or products. If you don’t already have a content calendar—a schedule for creating and adding new content to your site—start by making one. Your content calendar can be as simple as reminders in your existing Google calendar or as comprehensive as a WordPress plugin like Editorial Calendar that lets you schedule, edit, and publish your WordPress posts easily. 2. Bring Older Content Up to Date Of course, the more new content you publish, the bigger your archive of older content will be. Don’t let that material get stale. You can get more views for your older content by linking to it in some of your new posts. You can also use the related content feature in the free version of the Jetpack WordPress plugin to find and display related posts at the bottom of each new post you create. Your older content may need updating to keep it reliable and relevant. Information changes, links get broken, and you may have new insights to add to your previous posts. If your archived posts number in the hundreds or thousands, keeping it all updated may seem like an impossible task. That’s why it’s a best practice to start your update program with what’s called your “cornerstone content”—the best performing and most relevant articles on your site. Build reminders into your content calendar to update these pieces every 6 to 12 months. Once you’ve got that cornerstone content up to date, add reviews and updates to your content calendar for your non-blog content, too, like your About and Contact pages. 3. Repurpose Your Older Content Let’s say your foodie blog has an old post about sous vide cooking basics. Now that sous vide cooking is trendy, think about how you can repackage the information in that old post to grow your audience. You could turn the basic steps into an infographic or slide deck to share on social media. You could also create a video based on your post to share on social media and YouTube. Got a bunch of short posts about sous vide tips and tools? Try combining them into one big new post. Or maybe now’s the time to put all that information into an eBook that your visitors can download if they sign up for your newsletter. 4. Keep an Eye on Keyword Data Check your Google Search Console data to see what keywords are bringing visitors to your site. If your content doesn’t already contain the most popular keywords your site visitors are using, it’s time to revise some of your posts to include those keywords—where they’re a natural fit. You can also use those keywords as a list of potential topics for new content. 5. Update Your Web Design It’s not only your content that you want to keep fresh and interesting. The appearance of your site will get stale over time, too—especially to frequent visitors. It may also be time for a web design makeover if: Your site doesn’t look good on mobile browsers. This is huge. If your site is hard to read or navigate on a smartphone screen, you need to make finding a mobile-friendly theme your top priority. You’re rebranding your blog or business and have a new logo, tagline, and colors. You’re adding a lot of new functionality to your site (a blog, an online store, online courses) and you want to visually cue visitors in to the fact that you’ve made big changes. The easiest way to update the look of your site is with a new theme. You can buy a theme or find one for free. HostGator’s managed WordPress hosting and Gator Website Builder plans include access to free themes. And we’ve recommended some of our favorite WordPress themes here on the blog. Before you make any live changes to your site theme, install a few themes and preview them to see how they look with your content. Before you activate your new theme, back up your site in case you need to revert to your old theme while you make some adjustments to the new one. 6. Upgrade Your Website Functionality We’ve already mentioned mobile-friendliness as a website must-have. As a site owner, you also get to stay on top of SEO best practices, tools like schema.org markup for rich results in search, and your site’s performance compared to the benchmarks set by Google, so your site doesn’t get left in the dust by newer, faster alternatives. Yoast SEO is a popular SEO plugin for WordPress sites , because it delivers frequent updates and provides lots of user education. To help you format rich search results for your content, All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets lets you build markups without coding and then preview the results before you publish. As for speed, it’s smart to regularly test your most important pages for mobile and desktop speed using Google’s Test My Site and Page Speed Insights tools. Each test will give you a score and detailed suggestions on how to speed up your site if you need to make improvements. Is It Time to Update Your Website? Together, these regular updates and checks will help you keep up with your visitors’ expectations for up-to-date content, visual interest, and a site that meets current performance standards. When did you last freshen up your site? What do you plan to update next? Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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The 5 Pages Every Website Needs

Posted on May 6, 2019 by Hosting

The post The 5 Pages Every Website Needs appeared first on HostGator Blog . Your website is an important part of your business. Without it, you can lose potential customers and miss out on revenue. Whether you sell jewelry or counseling services, your site must tell a compelling story of who you are, how you can help visitors, what you offer, and how people can contact you. This virtual welcome gives people peace of mind. At a minimum, you’ll want to include five specific pages on your website to do this.  5 Pages Every Website Needs Do you have them all? Read below.   1. Homepage The homepage is where all the action happens on your site. It’s the first thing visitors see, and it determines if an individual will browse around or say goodbye. When crafting your homepage, you must think from the customer’s perspective. From navigation bars to images to copy, you control your visitors’ first impression. Visitors should clearly understand the objective of your homepage in just a few seconds. You want them to see your logo with a visible call-to-action button. CarMax implements this strategy flawlessly with simple copy and a self-explanatory header photo. Both new visitors and returning customers get user-friendly directions. Avoid cluttering your homepage with multiple, irrelevant images. You also don’t want outrageous color patterns. Represent your small business well by aiming for simplicity in your design . If you’re creating a new site or rebuilding an old one, get feedback from your potential visitors. Running a small soft launch will give you incredible insight to enhance your homepage. Your homepage should improve how visitors perceive your small business. It’s your gateway to raising brand awareness and gaining more conversions.   2. About Page The About page is an opportunity to elaborate on your brand’s vision and accomplishments. Be bold in your statements and discuss how your goals will help customers. Storytelling is pivotal for this page. You want readers to relate to your brand values, join your journey, and share the message with their family members and friends. “An About us page is meant to connect emotionally with people. Hence, when you own a story that tells how you have touched lives, say it loud to the world. Such content humanizes your business supplying meaning and context for your product,” says Prince Kapoor , a digital marketing analyst at LoginRadius. Rent the Runway uses its About page to share the company’s vision and mission. It discusses why the co-founders started the brand and gives an explanation for their relentless confidence. Then, it concludes with an open-ended question for the reader. Consider adapting your About page to fit your audience’s needs. You may want to write it in multiple languages or make it easy to read with a timeline graph.   3. Products or Services Page The products and services page is the crux of most websites. It should convert a casual visitor into a frequent shopper. Rightfully so, you want to spend a considerable amount of time improving this page for the customer experience. When crafting a product description, you’ll want to sell the benefits, not the features. Tell a vivid story that emphasizes how buyers will feel after purchasing your product. You want them to feel a part of the product before they even receive it. Product photography plays an integral role, too. Highlight multiple angles of the product and allow users to zoom in and out. When applicable, shoot a short video to strengthen the visual experience. Bobbi Brown Cosmetics ’ product page offers a sleek, modern design. You don’t have to squint your eyes to see the product items. Shoppers also can visibly see the product’s star rating and price. If you sell services , write the same elaborate descriptions. Give your customers context into how you deliver your services. For example, a hairdresser may spotlight the in-store experience of a serene ambience with immediate service.   4. Blog Page The blog represents a major platform for your brand to talk directly with customers. You can feature product updates, the latest trends, and respond to buyers’ FAQs. Successful blogs are ongoing journeys, not destinations. Your blog must capture visitors’ attention and take them on your unique brand adventure. For instance, you may give them a behind-the-scenes look at product design or record a testimonial video with a happy customer. “Your blog posts can demonstrate your expertise in a particular subject area by sharing high-quality and relevant information with your readers. Over time, you can become known as a go-to resource that provides consistent and useful information,” writes Alyssa Gregory , an entrepreneur, writer, and marketer. The Slack blog coincides with the brand’s mission to be a collaboration hub. You can read articles about product tips, work culture, and productivity. It’s a true reflection of teamwork. In your blog, stay away from using your every post to sell products. Customers will quickly get annoyed and visit your competitor’s site. Instead, offer your visitors solutions and inspire them to live better.   5. Contact Page Communication helps build solid relationships with your customers. You get to learn about their needs and desires as it relates to your products. Plus, it opens the door to receiving critical feedback. Think of your contact page as a customer support tool. The priority is to deliver a superb service, no matter the visitor’s reason. You want customers to get accurate information as well. Depending on your type of business, you may post the brand’s physical address, email address, or phone number. If you have a live chat option, please express the availability of the support agents on the page. When customers land on Burger King’s contact page, they see an option to receive free food for completing a survey. They also can leave a message or call the fast food chain’s headquarters. Your contact page should be easily accessible. You don’t want customers clicking through five different pages to connect with your business. The contact page is the perfect spot to set customer expectations. Let your visitors know your response time and commit to that promise.   Upgrade Your Website Educate your visitors with key information about your business. Your website is an effective tool to boost brand awareness and earn more sales. Upgrade your site with all the pertinent pages. Get started building your website today. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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What Is Responsive Web Design?

Posted on April 17, 2019 by Hosting

The post What Is Responsive Web Design? appeared first on HostGator Blog . Whether you’re building a new website or realize it’s time to do a proper redesign for a website you already have, one of the first concepts you’re likely to encounter in your research to get started is responsive web design. What Is Responsive Web Design? Responsive web design is a relatively new way of approaching website design that ensures that a website looks good on all devices. On responsive websites, the same information and page elements appear no matter what device you’re on, but the way they’re sized and organized will change based on your screen size.   The website adapts (or responds) to the smaller screen size of smartphones and tablets  to provide an intuitive experience, regardless of your device. An adaptive design and flexible layout provides a better user experience for your visitors and also helps to boost your search engine optimization value. With the growing use of mobile devices to access websites of all types— mobile use now surpasses desktop —website owners have to prioritize the mobile experience. In the early days of mobile, designers would often create a separate mobile website for smartphone visitors than the one that would load for desktop visitors. But as the number of device types and screen sizes available grows, that’s not a practical solution. In addition to the variety of screen sizes, you also have to deal with people’s ability to change the direction of how they hold their devices (landscape versus portrait) and the fact that people have varied preferences for how they size their web browser windows. In short, you could design a dozen completely unique websites to accommodate different screen sizes and still be missing out on a number of common use cases. Or you can design one responsive website that works on just about every device, screen, and web browser window—no matter the size. The Main Elements of Responsive Web Design You’ve likely encountered many examples of responsive web design without thinking about how it all works. In order to design a website that’s responsive, designers employ a few main tricks and techniques. Flexible grids Designers have always used grids to build websites, but for responsive websites they have to make sure the grid is flexible and can load differently based on the screen size. Flexible grids are therefore a core part of responsive website design. Breakpoints Related to flexible grids, breakpoints are the spots on the page you identify where the page can be cut off and the information to the side moved downward. Every website should have at least three breakpoints for the three main devices types people use, but most websites will have more than that. Flexible images and responsive media queries Text is pretty easy to move around based on screen size, but images and media features can be potentially trickier. There are a number of different options designers can employ to ensure images show up in the right size for the screen, without causing slow load times or looking strangely squashed. In most cases, it’s a matter of coding to determine how large the image will show up . In others, it could be changing the image itself (cutting unnecessary parts out, for instance) and telling the site which version to load based on the screen size. There are also coding commands designers can use to ensure any media included on a page loads in the right size. Responsive media queries allow you to set the maximum and minimum width for the media, as well as setting orientation for media on iPads. Visual hierarchy A big part of website design with a responsive layout is always considering which parts of a page are the highest priority. The images and messages it’s most important for your visitors to see should go higher up on the page, with any elements that are less important going further down. Visual hierarchy is a good web design practice in general, but it’s especially important in responsive design since visitors on smaller devices will be seeing less on the page at a time. You want to keep them on the page, so make sure the most valuable parts of the page are accessible higher up. Touchscreen and mouse friendly elements Another important consideration in mobile design is making sure everything on the page is just as intuitive and usable on a touchscreen as it is with a mouse . That means links that are big and obvious enough to select on a small screen and easy scrolling on all device types. Good responsive design includes user testing to make sure all elements of a page work just as well using a mouse as doing it all by touch.   5 Reasons You Should Use Responsive Web Design As a website owner, you know web design trends sometimes come and go. If you already have a website, committing to a professional website makeover  or redesign is a big deal, so even knowing what responsive website design is and how big of a buzzword it is, you may wonder if it really is important to build a responsive website. And for someone starting a new website, you may worry making it responsive could be more difficult or expensive. In either case, responsive web design really is the best choice for a few good reasons. 1. A majority of web users browse on mobile. Recent estimates put the number of people with mobile devices at over five billion . And as we already mentioned, more internet use now happens on mobile devices than on desktops. Mobile is clearly a trend that’s here to stay, and website owners need to adapt. You don’t want to alienate over half of your website visitors by delivering them a crummy user experience. For your website to work for everyone, you need to prioritize your mobile and desktop visitors equally. And responsive websites are the best way to make sure everyone that visits your website gets the experience you’re aiming for. 2. A mobile-friendly website is required for SEO. For several years now, Google has been telling SEO professionals that how well a website works on mobile is a factor in how they determine rankings. They’ve even gone so far as to develop a free tool to see how mobile friendly your website is. If you want people to find your website through the search engine, then making it mobile friendly is crucial. Not only has Google been upfront about mobile friendliness being an SEO ranking factor, but they’ve also said outright that they prefer responsive design. While expressing a preference isn’t quite the same thing as saying it will boost your SEO, if you care about where your website shows up in the rankings, following Google’s recommendations is just smart. 3.  It saves you time. Obviously you need a website that works on mobile, there’s no longer a debate on that point. But there are other options for making your website mobile friendly than going with responsive design. You can create a separate mobile version of your website, for instance. But having two websites comes with certain issues. Top of the list is that it takes more time to build two independent websites than it does to build a single responsive website. You’ll be doubling your efforts both when it comes to creating the websites and when it comes to updating them over time. And you’ll have to actively stay on top of the performance of each. There are more opportunities for broken links or pages that don’t load right when you have double the websites to monitor. 4. It provides consistent information across devices. The thinking behind building a unique mobile website is that you can figure out what people are looking for when they come to your website on a mobile device and build a site that answers those mobile-specific needs. Then, when building out your desktop website, you can build a fuller version of the site that includes everything you want to include, since you have more space to work with. The problem is that means your mobile visitors are missing out on some of the information your desktop visitors get to see. Either you’re padding your desktop website with information your visitors don’t really need, or you’re depriving your mobile visitors of stuff they might be interested in. Either way, you’re creating an unequal experience for your visitors based on the device they use. And you may be surprised by the way mobile behavior resembles desktop. An analysis found that people are willing to scroll on mobile devices almost as much as they do on desktop, and are, if anything, more engaged on mobile devices and more likely to click on links. If you kept all your longer pages and content to the desktop-only version of your website, you’re keeping them from mobile users who may well be more likely to read and engage with them. 5. It makes tracking analytics easier. This is just one more way having double the websites means having to do more work. You have to keep up with the analytics for both versions of your website, and analyze the results separately. In contrast, with responsive websites you can still see how your analytics differ based on the device people are using, but you’re able to make deductions about what’s working for your audience based on a consistent big picture view of your website. It’s just easier to track your analytics all in one place and make sense out of them when you’re dealing with a relatively consistent experience across devices. How to Create a Responsive Website As responsive web design has increasingly become the norm, website owners now have easier options for creating a responsive website. When trying to decide how to make your website responsive, you have two main choices. Option #1: Use a responsive template. Building a website today is much easier than it was in the early years of the internet. Even people with zero coding or design skills can pull together a good looking website in a matter of hours with the help of the right website builder . And because of how important responsive web design has become, the best website builders will include responsive templates you can use to make designing a mobile-friendly responsive website simple. If your priority is getting your website up in a way that’s quick, easy, and affordable, a website builder with mobile-friendly templates is the best tool for responsive web design . When trying to find the right website builder for your needs, make sure that it offers a number of well designed templates to choose from and that they’re all responsive. You won’t have to do any extra work to make sure your website works just as well for your mobile users as it does for your desktop visitors. Option #2: Hire a skilled designer. Your second option is more expensive, but it gives you more power to realize the specific vision you have of a website. While website builders with responsive templates make things a lot easier, you’re working from a design that already exists and that other websites start from as well. A good web designer can build you a website from scratch that directly matches what you have in mind. At this point, most professional web designers have the skill to build responsive websites, but do make sure to ask any designer you consider about their experience and make it clear from the outset that you want your website to be responsive. Ask to see other examples of websites that are responsive to make sure you like their work and trust them to create the website you want. One Last Step: Perform User Testing. Whichever option you choose for building your responsive website, in order to truly know that it works well on all types of devices, you need to test it out. Or more accurately, you need people in your target audience to test it out. User testing ensures you spot issues with your website’s usability in advance of when you release it. It’s better to know that your checkout process is difficult on a mobile device before you start losing sales because of it, and user testing provides you with that kind of valuable head’s up. User testing is a good idea for any website, but it can especially be useful with responsive websites so you can make sure your website looks the way you want it to on as many device types as possible. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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