If you are a web developer, there is a good chance that you have your styling and development skills nailed down for desktop and laptop displays. However, you know that you need to make sure that those same designs look good on smaller screens, like those of a tablet or a smartphone. You also know that if a user has any difficulty at all with a site, he or she is very likely to just ditch the site entirely, without spending more than a few seconds trying to figure it out because he or she can get the same product or information elsewhere, with less effort. If you want to retain these customers, your websites have to be extremely easy to use on mobile devices. Here are some tips for making sure that this happens.

1. Consider Making a Separate Mobile Page

It is possible for web browsers to send information to your servers that the screen on which the user is looking at your page is small or large. This will allow you to serve different web pages to mobile users that you might send to desktop users. This can require more development time up front, but it will allow you to vastly simplify your website so that it is very easy to use on a mobile device.

2. Look Into Responsive Frameworks

You can also go the responsive design route, which will allow the web page that you built for a desktop or laptop screen to be scaled down and then used effectively on a mobile screen. You can manually add responsive design by telling each of the items that are on a web page what size you would like them to be based on a threshold of varying screen sizes. You can also use a framework that will allow this to happen automatically. Both are good choices that will allow your website to scale nicely and be used easily by users.

3. Stick to What's Normal

There is a general layout that many mobile websites have, with the menu button in the top left corner of the screen and content that scrolls smoothly in the middle. Find out all of the norms for the type of website that you are trying to build and stick to them. Customers are already familiar with this design pattern and will therefore have more success navigating your site if you do this.

For more information, talk to a company, such as Evolve Business Solutions, that specializes in responsive website design.