Smartphones and tablets have become an integral part of our lives. They are used by everyone irrespective of age groups, education, and economic status. The number of mobile app downloads worldwide in 2018 is 205.4 billion, which is too huge a number to be ignored (Statista). Thus, optimizing for mobile screen sizes is not an option anymore. It has become a necessity to connect with the audience.
Screen resolution, or display resolution, refers to the size of the entire image displayed on your computers monitor. Specifically, it refers to the number of individual picture elements, or pixels, that are displayed at once. A pixel is the smallest element on your computer screen, the more pixels, the more detailed the image will be. With less pixels, the display elements will look bigger, but there will be less space on the desktop for windows and programs to run.
In a recent update, Google announced its move to a mobile-first index in 2018. It means Google has decided to rank the websites based on their mobile versions first. This encouraged the shift in design approach from ‘mobile-friendly’ to ‘mobile first’.
With the increasing smartphone screen sizes and decreasing tablet screen sizes, 5.5 to 6-inch screens are mainly in use. Thus, the design and content should be optimized for these screen sizes.
Here are a few tips on how to optimize for medium-sized screens.
1. Responsive: Make your website responsive for a great visual quality and browsing experience. The design elements should automatically resize according to the user’s device. Users must be able to seamlessly switch the devices.
2. Impeccable UX/UI: Enhance the user experience by using simple and touch-friendly design. The layout should be clean with single-column format, larger buttons, readable font, proportionate images, relative width and navigable pages. Add elements like carousels, panels and accordions to optimize your design.
3. Snackable content: Embrace brevity in your content. Short is better because online readers are easily distracted. Small chunks of content are much better than a wall of text. Let your content be to-the-point and fit into the busy-life. Use short paragraphs, bullet points, subheads and whitespaces.
4. Variable content: To increase the readability and conversion rates, include variable content. In addition to plain text, you can use short and engaging videos, images, animations and slideshows. Small and interactive elements can help the users get the gist of the content quickly.
5. Page Speed: Load-time of a page is a crucial step in optimization. According to a Google research, 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. The used videos and images should be optimized to smaller file sizes so as to increase page loading speed. This in turn reduces the bounce rate.
In conclusion, there are certain standards you need to follow for a mobile-friendly design. However, there are other factors also which are specific to your requirements. Listen to your users and follow the regular test-and-improve cycle.
In all, optimizing for screen size will help you in saving money, maintain time and ultimately win, retain and grow your audience.