As smartphones and tablets continue to dominate our digital lives, web designers face a daunting task. It’s crafting online experiences that seamlessly adapt to screens of all sizes. A web design that flows effortlessly like that will be preferred by users as well as designers. It’s a game-changer for savvy businesses. But do you know how designers create these fluid web designs?
This blog post will explain in detail. We will unpack its essence, mechanics, and comparative advantages one by one, making you understand the concept thoroughly. Plus, we will also find out how a skilled website designer in Melbourne can transform your online presence from stagnant to dynamic in no time.
First things first, let’s understand these differences:
Types of Web Designs
Website designers in Melbourne use various web design models. Some of them may sound similar to fluid designs, but they are not. Here are some important distinctions you should know before starting your project.
Fixed Design and Fluid Design
Fixed design, once a stalwart of the digital landscape, has fallen out of favour due to its rigidity and lack of adaptability across devices. Unlike fluid designs, which gracefully adjust to varying viewport sizes, fixed layouts stubbornly adhere to specific pixel widths, rendering them impractical for today’s diverse device ecosystem.
Thus, fluid design is embraced by designers at large. It’s mainly for its innate flexibility and user-centric ethos. This adaptability ensures a seamless user experience across devices, a feat unattainable with fixed designs.
Adaptive Design and Fluid Design
Adaptive design boasts a nuanced approach that tailors interfaces to users’ capabilities, both in form and function. Unlike the one-size-fits-all ethos of fluid layouts, adaptive designs leverage media queries to craft bespoke layouts for specific screen widths, optimising user experiences across a spectrum of devices.
Yet, with increased precision comes heightened complexity. Individual website owners often find the time and resources demanded by this approach overwhelming. Consequently, many opt for the accessibility and simplicity of fluid designs, prioritising usability over intricacy.
Responsive Design and Fluid Design
Meanwhile, the term “responsive design” adds another layer of complexity to the discourse. While fluid and adaptive designs technically fall under the umbrella of responsive web development, the term often denotes a specific methodology characterised by breakpoints—specific viewport widths that trigger layout adjustments. Unlike fluid designs, which primarily resize elements, responsive layouts rearrange or eliminate elements based on these breakpoints, ensuring optimal usability and aesthetics across devices.
Advantages of Fluid Designs
The primary advantage of fluid design lies in its capacity to render websites effectively across diverse screen dimensions, a feature of paramount significance today. Why is it so significant for mobile users? Well, according to a study, 88% of Australians own a smartphone, and even 17% of Australian adults are “smartphone-only” internet users. This means a large portion of mobile internet users are out there, and designing websites with them in mind will only become more important as time goes on.
When thinking from the perspective of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you would also benefit from knowing that Google does something called mobile-first indexing. It means that Google makes sure the top search results are mobile-friendly. In order to ensure your website is a top search result, it needs to be mobile-friendly.
Finally, another important advantage is that fluid layouts load fast. Performance is often an extremely important metric for website designers in Melbourne and beyond, so this benefit is nothing to gloss over. The reason is that there are not many adjustments to make in the positioning and sizing of elements when they are loaded.
Things to Consider When Building a Fluid Design
Fluid design, responsive design, and adaptive design each offer unique solutions tailored to specific needs rather than being universally applicable. What professional website designers in Melbourne know is that these approaches can even complement each other, allowing you to enhance the mobile user experience.
So, when contemplating the adoption of a fluid design, here are the factors you should consider.
1. Audience Metrics: Utilise tracking tools such as Google Analytics to dissect traffic patterns across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. These insights can guide the strategic allocation of design resources.
2. Site Content: Evaluate the nature of your site’s content. If it primarily comprises lightweight text, media, and interactive elements, a fluid design may suffice for certain or all pages. Conversely, for content-rich websites, incorporating adaptive and responsive principles is advisable. Utilising wireframes to blueprint layout configurations proves invaluable during this phase.
3. Resources: Assess the available resources in terms of time, budget, and expertise. While fluid designs are generally simpler to implement from scratch, the emergence of website builders offering pre-designed responsive page templates has democratised the creation of complex responsive layouts, catering to individuals lacking advanced design skills.
Final word:
Remember, thorough testing across a spectrum of screen sizes—ranging from smartphones to large desktop browser windows—is imperative when integrating fluid elements into your web pages. Hire a competent website designer in Melbourne and get this project off the ground immediately, as every minute counts in the digital landscape.
If you are looking for recommendations, consider Make My Website, as it is a truly worthwhile agency for web design and SEO services. Set up an appointment with their website designers in Melbourne, and you will see it for yourself. Good luck!
