When prospective customers come to your website, they deserve an immersive experience that enables them to quickly and easily find the information they want. That’s why you need a more dynamic website to get the viewer’s attention and retain the existing ones.
One reliable approach is to use responsive web design (RWD) to gain a competitive advantage in the target market. According to a survey, more than 73.1% of visitors leave a website because it is poorly designed.
If you are a dental practitioner, you are likely losing out on many prospective patients because of a website that’s difficult to browse. However, you can increase the responsiveness of your dental website with this guide.
What Is A Responsive Web Design?
A responsive design involves creating dynamic changes to the look of a website. Doing so enables a website to display its web pages and other components on all devices, irrespective of their size.
The design will work efficiently and simultaneously on an iPhone, tablet and laptop. Statistics show that mobile devices account for almost 60% of the web-traffic. So it is necessary to optimize the website for all devices.
A responsive design uses breakpoints to determine the proportions of the site layout. These breakpoints depend on the width of the browser. We can add a unique web design above and below breakpoints.
The methodology behind auto-adjusting web pages is because of the reshuffling of page elements. RWD allows using the same codebase to support different screen sizes using the HTML and CSS codes. It includes proportion-based grids to re-arrange the elements.
Why Do Businesses And Dental Practitioners Need A Responsive Web Design?
A responsive design approach brings significant benefits to business owners. If you are a dental clinic owner, you already face challenges in managing costs. Consider using responsive web design for the following reasons:
- One site for all devices: The responsive design lets you focus your efforts and resources on creating one site rather than working on multiple sites. Whether your target audience uses mobile phones, iPad, or laptops, everyone will get access to the same information.
- Optimal design: A responsive web design approach allows you to scale the images, fonts, titles appropriately, and other HTML elements according to the viewer’s screen.
- No unnecessary redirects: Static websites often put links to redirect the viewers to the correct site or web pages. These types of activities can increase the bounce rate and affect the credibility of a business or brand.
- Save Resources: When focusing on one site rather than multiple sites, the results are error-free and satisfying. Moreover, multiple websites mean extra costs, time, and errors.
Essential Elements Of A Responsive Web Design
A designer must focus on multiple elements when creating a web design. However, a few primary elements are essential for responsive design. Renowned author and web design specialist “Ethan Marcotte” has also emphasized three fundamental elements.
Flexible Grids
You should select grids that suit you and well define your needs. You can choose the grid based on columns, containers, and spacing parameters. In addition, many existing grids use CSS to space, align and re-size. It can become challenging to use them for your responsive web design. It would be best to create a flexible grid system based on your layout size and spacing.
Flexible Images
We all know the importance of images from a web design and SEO perspective. Large images should be made smaller without impacting their quality since size directly affects a web page’s loading time.
You can hide the image for smaller screens to only serve the content. Moreover, the course includes using multiple versions of images on the server. However, keep in mind that making flexible images can give a tough time to the developer, and they may take some time.
Media Queries
These are a crucial part of responsive web design. They enable you to create various layouts depending on the viewport size. Before using media queries, you must have a reliable, flexible grid and image system.
Media queries enable designers to create multiple layouts using the same HTML codes. Designers use features from the viewer’s device like screen resolution, colours, parameters, device touch screen, and others.
With the help of queries, we can create a more authentic and user-friendly responsive design.
Other Building Blocks For Responsive Web Design
The above three elements are crucial for a responsive design. This doesn’t mean that they should have the entire focus. There are some other elements that you should also consider while developing the web design. It would be best if you considered the following building blocks too
- Flexible Layout
- Website Speed
- Fluid Layouts
- CSS and HTML
Do You Want To Have A Responsive Dental Website?
Your dental website aims to attract new customers, get their attention and retain the old ones. This needs to be the case regardless of the type of device they use to access the site.
If you cannot create a responsive website, you are missing a significant chunk of customers.
The best approach is to get help from professionals with expertise in dental marketing and responsive web design. MediBoost can help you with both. Visit our website today to get more information, or give us a call at 1300 163 058. We’re highly experienced in web design for dentists.
References
GoodFirms – Website Design Stats And Trends For Small Businesses – GoodFirms Research
– https://www.goodfirms.co/resources/web-design-research-small-business
Statista – Percentage of mobile device website traffic worldwide from 1st quarter 2015 to 2nd quarter 2022
– https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices/
Ethan Marcotte
– https://ethanmarcotte.com/
