This month sees the launch of a brand new website for ARA Homes – an established house builder based in Loughton, Essex with a long history of delivering quality individual properties in and around London.
The site has a contemporary look and feel with some stunning photography to help showcase the company’s recent developments online.
The site is fully responsive – which means that it adapts to the screen size it’s viewed on, whether that be a smart phone, tablet or desktop monitor.
What did the responsive design entail?
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Optimising images for different screen sizes, resolutions and connection speeds. For example, on a desktop computer the images are large and detailed, whereas on a smart phone they are smaller and faster to load.
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Navigation at the bottom! – on mobile devices the navigation was moved to the bottom of the screen to prevent it from “hogging” every initial page view, whereas on tablets and computers the navigation is at the top of the page.
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Larger navigation links – The size of the navigation buttons was increased on touch screen phones to prevent “fat finger syndrome” – whereby it’s difficult to tap on tiny links.
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Legible text – on smaller screens the page adapts to fit the device width, and text is legible without having to constantly pinch to zoom in and out.
With a Google Page speed score of 92 out of 100 not only does the site look great across all devices, but we’ve followed all of the best practise guidelines during development to ensure that it’s compact, fast and functional.
We worked with ARA Homes on a few different designs, with the final site incorporating the best ideas from all of them. As with all of our projects, prior to its launch we tested the site in over 10 different web browsers for maximum compatibility.
David Shaw, one of the Directors of ARA Homes, had the final word: “We’re extremely pleased with the service provided by 1st WebDesigns, they were professional, very diligent, and have delivered an exceptional web site for us, at a very reasonable price. I cannot recommend them highly enough.”