Your author website is the information hub of your online presence, so it’s important that it functions seamlessly for the largest possible audience. With more and more people viewing websites on mobile devices, you don’t want to lose the interest of potential readers, book buyers, editors, agents, or fans simply because your author website only works on a desktop computer. At Web Design Relief, our tech experts know how to create beautiful author websites featuring responsive website design. Here’s what you need to know to ensure your website performs optimally on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Responsive Website Design For Author Websites

A responsive website automatically resizes your web pages to accommodate different devices and makes them mobile-friendly when they are accessed on phones and tablets. Web elements like images, backgrounds, forms, and more will all reconfigure to display properly within the smaller dimensions of handheld devices. The orientation of your web pages will also change depending on the device, allowing for horizontal or vertical views. With half of all website traffic coming through on mobile devices, responsive website design essentially establishes a sense of consistency between how your website looks on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and just about any other device that can access the Internet.

When your website automatically adjusts to different screen sizes, your visitors enjoy a better and faster experience. Responsive websites eliminate the need to pinch and zoom on smart screens, so your audience can spend more time getting familiar with your writing projects and less time struggling to see what’s being featured on your site.

Some authors try to get around this by creating multiple websites for mobile and desktop use, but this can be confusing for anyone who is looking for you online. Having two different websites may lead visitors to mistakenly think the sites belong to two different authors! Consistency is the first step to building impressive brand awareness. Because a responsive website allows you to have one flexible website rather than a separate mobile and desktop site, you’ll have a more consistent online platform.

Another bonus: Responsive website design has been shown to increase your SEO!

Best Design Strategies For A Responsive Website

Avoid overly large media: Unless you have a specific reason for needing a large image as your background, it’s best to resize your images to the minimum size of 300 dpi. Larger images not only slow down your website’s loading speed, but they often become obscured when scaling down to fit on a mobile device.

Nix your video backgrounds: While video backgrounds and other moving elements can be tempting, they have no place on a responsive website. Mobile websites don’t have the capabilities to support moving backgrounds.

Choose the right typography: Try to avoid using extra-large fonts. Although they may look eye-catching on your desktop monitor, they’re much less appealing on smaller smartphones and tablets. We recommend sticking to a font size of 12-point to 20-point for your body text and 30-point to 50-point for your headers and banners.

Test your author website on multiple devices: The best and easiest way to make sure your author website design is responsive is to test it yourself! Open your website on as many different devices and resolutions as possible and see if everything is functional and displaying properly. Responsinator is a helpful online tool that allows you to test your website’s responsiveness on different devices without actually having all the items in hand.

Responsive website design ensures your author website is accessible, readable, and sized correctly for all your visitors, whether they are viewing it on the latest smart device or sitting down at a desktop computer. At Web Design Relief, our tech experts create websites that are always fully responsive and optimized for mobile devices. Take a look at our portfolio and then schedule your free consultation today!

Question: What device do you use most often to view the Internet?