How to create Responsive Web Design for E-Commerce Platforms

Tablet and smartphone adoption have increased by leaps and bounds. For this reason, many eCommerce businesses are giving more attention to making their website more mobile responsive.   The world is bedding towards mobile-first design, which is why most eCommerce companies are increasingly going for responsive design testing.

This article does not list a bazillion tactics but a handful of practical methods that work. Optimize for responsive web designs that delight your audience when browsing your eCommerce platforms. 

What is Responsive Web Design? 

Responsive design is an approach to web design that adapts the web content to screen sizes. People spend 3.3 hours a day interacting with digital media on their smartphones. Because of this paradigm shift, a website should run from various devices-browser-OS combinations. 

Put simply, a responsive website can be opened irrespective of any device, which will still look and function perfectly.

Why does Ecommerce Responsive Website Design matter?

If you’re a novice in web design, you may have been overwhelmed by the importance of responsive web design. The answer is straightforward. 

• Designing for a single device won’t be effective. According to a study, 60.66% of website traffic comes from mobile. 
• Over the last few years, mobile has played a pivotal role as an advertising channel. 
• Even in the current market scenario, mobile ad spending is growing drastically.

On that note, if the landing pages aren’t optimized for mobile, it may be challenging for business owners to maximize the ROI. Also, lousy conversion rates may lead to fewer leads and wasted ad spending.  

Relevant Screen resolutions for Responsive Web Design 

When you delve deeper, consider the screen resolutions that will work across tablet, mobile and desktop. 

Common Screen Sizes to Consider 

• Mobile: 375 x 667
• Mobile: 360 x 720
• Mobile: 360 x 640
• iPhone X: 375 x 812
• Laptop: 1366 x 768
• High-Resolution Laptop: 1920 x 1080

Making the eCommerce Website Responsive

A high-quality, responsive eCommerce website can help to grow the audience, improve conversion, engagements, and the overall ROI of the business. To execute the design process smoothly, the following elements and key factors may be conducive for you.

1. Intuitive Navigation 

Navigation is crucial while designing a responsive website. If your client has a potential base of online shoppers, then they may want the best UX. You should keep the audience’s preference while working on eCommerce responsive website design and try to. 

Picture this

• Maria owns a brick-and-mortar cosmetic store with a Shopify website. However, the web design and navigation are not clean to attract more visitors or retain the existing ones
• In turn, the target audience will not hit the land-based store as the website looks cluttered. 
• Now, Maria wants a responsive website. which should be simple, user-friendly, and personalized, which allows easy navigation. 

Maria can improve her eCommerce platform’s performance by creating a responsive website. The links to other pages should be placed for faster navigation. In turn, her online customers and website users can find what they need intuitively. 

How to make navigation easy for eCommerce websites? Here are the best practices-

• Always use orthodox icons and symbols.
• Make the clickable elements obvious.
• Redirect the users to the homepage with your business logo
• Make the primary navigation bar sticky
• Make sure you’re using a sitemap to build a structure
• Use analytics and heatmap for optimizing design 
• Limit menu element numbers 

2. Improve Page Speed

Shoppers prefer using smartphones for browsing e-commerce websites or platforms for the sheer speed of it. However, they may have other devices, such as iPad or desktops, to access the websites on a larger screen. They may use mobile devices to add items to the cart. 

Therefore, the website should be aligned with all device’s page speeds to ensure a consistent platform UX. 

Remember, users do not want to sit around and wait for their payment gateway to load. They have multiple eCommerce platforms to choose from, and they will exercise their right to choose if they encounter a slow website.

3. Typography 

While making a responsive web design, the main focus should be responsive elements, layout blocks, and media. Adjust the font sizes per the screen size and target multiple text elements by using commas to separate each.

You can do it by setting a static value for font size. You set it for 22 px and adapt the same for each media query.

4. Test Responsiveness 

Testing a website’s responsiveness will help you gauge the work progress. With the same, you will know the exact variations and what they will look like. Based on that, you can take your steps accordingly.

You can test the responsiveness of an eCommerce website to check whether the website is mobile-friendly or not with Browserstack’s Responsive Testing. You just need to enter the URL of your website and click the CHECK button to get the results.    

Try Responsive Testing

5. Use a Preset Responsive Theme  

You can use a premade theme with built-in responsiveness. CMS features and website builders have free and paid responsive themes and templates. As per the eCommerce platform requirement, you can adjust the elements of the brand while including content.

Wrapping it up 

Now that you’ve seen how to make a website responsive, it’s time to answer a simple question. 

What’s the next step you’re going to take? 

Following the above guide may want to use a tool to test the website’s responsiveness. If you’re seeking a responsive checker, you can try Browserstack to check websites, and it’s completely FREE. There are many screen sizes, so you can know what the website looks like on different devices. 

Try Cross Browser Testing for Free