If you’re ditching your old website design and going responsive, You’ll want to know to make sure your website looks good on various devices.

How to Make Sure Your Website Looks Good on Various Devices

Seventy-eight percent of mobile searches for local business information result in a purchase, according to a study conducted by comScore. Meanwhile, data compiled by eConsultancy for its Mobile Websites and Apps Optimization Best Practice Guide shows that 74 percent of respondents abandon mobile sites after taking just 5 seconds to load. Another 46 percent won’t return to a poor performing site.



But just because you can view your site reasonably well on various devices doesn’t mean it’s mobile-friendly or responsive. To compete in today’s marketplace, the pressure is on to make your website look great and function well on all types of devices. Fortunately, the process doesn’t have to be a daunting one and can be as simple as tweaking your images or ditching your old design template in favor of something responsive. Here’s how to make sure your website looks good on various devices.



Use Responsive Design



The more complicated and robust your site is, the more you need a responsive framework to handle all the bells and whistles. Using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) helps your website auto-adjust and display properly on just about any new device. Whether your audience shrinks or stretches your site, the responsive design allows them to see the same dimensions and ensures they don’t lose navigation ability. For example, T-Mobile’s site features a floating chat box, a shopping cart and images that translate across laptops, tablets and smartphones without difficulty.



Simplify Your Site



If your website doesn’t require as many bells and whistles as a big retailer, opt for simplicity instead. Pare down your design and landing page copy, and focus on the essentials of what your customers need to see. Remember the more graphics and images you use, the longer it takes for your site to load and customers to navigate their way to the shopping cart. It’s also best practice to keep the navigation options easy to use and able to be thumbed across for users logging in from a smartphone.



Incorporate Mobile Plugins



Some business owners opt to build a separate mobile version of their site, but there is an easier way to resolve their issues. Popular content management systems, like Drupal and WordPress, are set up to make your site mobile-ready without doing anything extra. Or you can download free mobile plugins like WordPress’ JetPack to create a simple and effective mobile-ready site. Check with your web developer or content management system provider to find out if it offers mobile-friendly website tools.



Optimize Your Images



Get rid of large video files, retain-ready images and slow-loading visuals in favor of lower resolution options as appropriate. Choose images that can be resized without compromising your website’s message. For example, some devices might minimize the image or the customer might choose to shrink your site and not really notice the side banner. You need to know if there is an important sale item or promotion they’re going to miss if this happens.



Test Your Site



Remember to fully test how your site looks now that it has been modified to attract the mobile crowd. Test your site on a free tool like Screenfly that shows exactly what your website looks like on everything from smartphones to televisions. It’s always possible that someone will use an Apple TV or Chromecast to view your site directly on a TV. You also can test your site on different mobile devices, such as an iPhone 6s, Galaxy Note5, iPad and Kindle Fire.