Getting Ready for a Responsive Web Design Project

[tweet_quote]Part of every website development is getting your content in order. [/tweet_quote]Before you can even begin to consider how you will get it to people, you have to consider what others will see. Poor content layout, regardless of how responsive the design is or how much time you put into this, will hurt your site. Put time into finding and planning every aspect of your design immediately. When you are the pro, this is something that you know to do and it is something that you have been doing for a long time now. For newcomers, however, you might think about going forward without any real content guidelines. This is a mistake and it can do more harm than good. You have to go into this fully prepared.

Do Your Wireframes

Have everything ready, including images and other content, and lay it all out as a wireframe to get a look in mind. Do not start coding and putting it all together until you know how you want it to look. This part of the website development is where you get your blueprint. As you get into the coding, the actual website design construction, you are going to have something to look to for guidance. This blueprint will help you to understand more about what you plan to do and what you have to do in order to have the results that you are after.

Get Ready for Design

Consider how the site will function and work with this design, as well. A responsive website is going to work a bit differently from others, after all, so you want to understand everything at a much deeper level. Figure out how everything is going to work together so that you can have an idea of how you should design the site and how everything should be set up.

Make sure that you website design is something that you can work with first. Before you get into designing it for everyone, you want it to suit your own needs so that you know how the site will look and work. You can do this by using your own specifications, designing a site that is perfect for your monitor and computer. This is easy, but you have to remember that it is not the end if you want to create a responsive website.

Understand what is required of the specific job going forward, too. While you want to design around what you know for right now, you do not want to design something that goes against what the client wants. Figure out a good middle point or design and then begin to alter what you have until it meets the requirements set by the client, or the requirements that you set for yourself.

Make sure to simplify the design and go with current trends, too. Trends in website design today include a more basic look, depending far more on beautiful font and a generally pleasing layout than anything else. Typography and that slim, modern look can help you immensely with the website development as a whole, along with appealing to a larger audience.

Test It

Once your website design looks good, start reviewing it on different size devices and browsers. You want it to fit everything from a handheld device to a large computer screen, and you want it to fit well. This means putting a bit of effort into resizing everything. Make sure that you are considering various screen sizes so that everyone who goes to your site, regardless of what they are using to access it, can see and use everything without any trouble.

With everything finished, start testing it out and playing with the design until it is just right. Website development does take a bit of tweaking and work, but it is worth it once you have the finished product. In order to get there, though, you have to try out the site in various browsers, see how it looks at different sizes, and make sure that you have everything looking and working perfectly. It takes time, effort, testing, and cleaning up to get all the way you planned at the beginning.