Today, your online presence has become your ID card. If you don’t have a strong online presence, then there is no point. You may have a lot to lose. Moreover, gone are the days when having a dynamic-looking website was enough. At present, achieving success is only possible when you have a smartphone application, or even the least you can do is have a mobile version of your website. And this is something we will be discussing further in this post. Yes, here you will come across some of the best free responsive web design tools to take into account.
Now, what is a responsive web design? Well, with technology evolving at a breathtaking speed, there is no doubt that the web design and web development realms also seem to be evolving. In fact, the time has come when we might not be able to keep up well with endless innovations and resolutions. And most importantly of all, can you bear the consequence of losing your visitors even after working for days and nights, or should you opt for a small change? I guess the latter one is better!
Introducing the Concept of Responsive Web Design
A responsive web design is an approach that ensures the particular design and development work wonders irrespective of the device. Whether it’s a blackberry or iPhone, iPad, or Kindle, a desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone, and even a smart TV, all screen resolutions are highly compatible.
Now generally what happens is Responsive web design features CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) that assist well in serving a wide range of style properties irrespective of the screen size, resolution, color capability, and several other characteristics.
- Can you read the text without zooming in?
- Are there adequate spaces available for the tap target?
- Do you require horizontal scrolling?
These elements certainly can make a difference between a normal site and a responsive web design. To check whether a particular website features a responsive design or not. All you have to do is:
- Open your website on the Google Chrome
- Press Ctrl + Shift + I
- By doing this you will open Chrome Devtools
- Press Ctrl + Shift + M
- You will reach the device toolbar
- Now try viewing the page from a smartphone and desktop
One of the obvious reasons why businesses opt for a responsive web design is because by doing so they can avoid unnecessary moves such as resizing, scrolling, zooming and so more. Not to mention it becomes extremely difficult to navigate through these sites every now and then. Imagine if you cannot handle this then how can you expect the same from your potential customers?
In addition, responsive web design assists you in getting rid of developing a dedicated website for your mobile users. Still not convinced? Well, further below I would like to mention certain reasons why businesses must invest in responsive web design and moreover why it matters the most in 2022.
Top Reasons for Considering Responsive Web Design
There is no denying that we live in a society where multi-screen technology has become the norm. So as a business you have to be seen across as many devices as you can be and smartphones are no exception here. In fact on that note, our tech giant Google announced that a website featuring mobile-friendliness and smooth user experience will definitely affect your rankings. Further, I would like to mention some other benefits of considering responsive web design.
#1 Minimized Cost
Beating up costs is not easy. And that’s the reason why most people aren’t ready to develop different sites for mobile and non-mobile audiences. Well, fortunately, we have a responsive design to the rescue. Here a lot of money can be saved by eliminating the cost of developing an entirely new website for mobile users. One single investment is all it takes and you can appeal to and gain the relevant attention of your end users in no time.
#2 Minimum Maintenance Required
Unlike other websites, responsive web design is something that requires a minimum amount of maintenance. Earlier, there were just a couple of options available in regard to maintaining a website.
Option 1 – Create a desktop site and then seek around for inconvenient mobile devices and see whether they are compatible.
Option 2 – Develop a different mobile site, something that exclusively works on the browser of the mobile device.
Both the aforementioned options definitely lead to the waste of money, time, and energy. Also, any website developed was supposed to be updated on a regular basis. Now, here comes the dilemma. Well, if you choose the desktop variant then you will be losing a lot of potential mobile users and vice versa. With a responsive web design, you can work well in both scenarios. Plus maintaining one site is quite easier than maintaining two at the same time.
#3 Effective Search Indexing
As mentioned earlier, search engines love responsiveness. After the mobile-friendly update was rolled out, people went crazy after creating mobile-friendly pages to rank better and in a shorter time span. Today, web pages do prefer to use high-readability text. The SEO ranking is extremely important, and here’s what one of the Google updates named Mobilegeddon emphasized:
- This update mainly works for mobile searches
- Several factors such as the language of the website or the location do matter
- More or less the update focuses on page mobile-friendliness. Every web page must be mobile-friendly or else the non-friendly ones might appear in the later search results.
Apart from these, there are several other reasons, such as reduced page loading speed, no bounce rate, increased customer retention, better UI/UX, and whatnot! Basically, the times when you need to pinch or zoom in to see relevant information have become a little passe. Not having a responsive web design can certainly lead to a poor mobile experience.
Further below, I would like to mention some of the best free responsive web design tools to take into consideration not just for 2022 but for a few years down the line.
Best Responsive Web Design Tools To Consider
#1 FitText
This one is a jQuery plugin. As the name implies, this particular responsive web designing tool has the potential to give flexibility to the existing font sizes. However, this particular tool works wonders for headings only and not for paragraphs. Now what the following tool does is display headings on the screen depending on the size of the screen visitors. Isn’t that cool? If you are looking for a unique plugin that is absolutely free and again easy to get started with, FitText is the name to take into consideration.
#2 BootStrap
Front-end web development has never been so easy to get started with than in the present times. Bootstrap is a framework that makes website development extremely convenient and easy-going. In fact, it may quite interest you to know that all the features available in Bootstrap are highly recommendable for developing a responsive web design. Right from resizing the buttons to changing their colors, and adjusting their navigation bars, Bootstrap offers it all! Bootstrap is one such tool taken into consideration.
#3 Google Mobile-friendly Test
Creating a strong online presence is extremely important. Therefore, It is extremely important to come up with mobile-friendly websites. So make sure to create a site that is highly flexible and robust. Now have you tried Google’s mobile-friendly test? Well, here all you need to do is add the URL or code and once you hit the test button, everything will be well taken care of. These tests often point out any current errors, if any.
On and all, when deciding upon a specific responsive web design tool, don’t just pick randomly. Try evaluating your business needs and requirements in advance. Sometimes all you need is a free tool that can make a significant impact on your online presence and growth.
Final Thoughts
So you see, responsive web design is pretty these days! And not trending towards it could be a foolish move because everything is changing right from the search engines to your end user’s preferences. So we better keep at it. For that, you need to consider a reliable web development company that ensures the best possible solutions in adherence to the present changing scenarios and times.
So that’s all for now! If you still have any doubts or queries, feel free to mention them in the comment section below. You can also share your favorite web design tool or software for 2022 as well. Also, do help us in spreading the word by sharing the following post among your peers.