Best Screen Resolution?

What is the Best Screen Resolution for Your Website?

Have you ever wondered what screen resolution most of your visitors are looking at your site with, and to which resolution it should be optimised? Find out how to make viewing your website more user-friendly.

• Web Design
• Computer Consultants

Screen resolution should be a key consideration when designing any website - it does, after all, affect how visitors can view and navigate your site. Screen resolution is the number of pixels that fit into the screen space (for instance 1024x768 means 1024 pixels horizontally and 768 pixels vertically).

How many times have you visited a site that is a mess to view? Many websites require horizontal scrolling and other annoying tasks that make it that much harder for a visitor to use, and thus make the likelihood that they will stay on that site much slimmer.

Looking at site statistics from March 2008 for NZS.com, we see that nearly half our visitors view the site at 1024x768 (45.06%) screen resolution, with a distant second and third place going to 1280x800 (15.51%), 1280x1024 (14.27%) and 800x600 (7.65%) screen sizes. The remainder of our users are scattered across a range of lesser-used screen resolutions.

When deciding which screen resolution to design for, keep your site's users in mind and try to ensure your site will perform well for the majority of visitors:

• Optimise your website for 1024x768 resolution - This is the most commonly used screen size-but check your own site statistics or target user group for the preferred screen resolution. You can do this by making sure all key information can be seen without scrolling, as well as ensuring text size is readable and the format of your content is correct (for example columns, photographs and captions).
• A liquid layout is a good option - This will stretch to the user's window size, rather than being frozen at the same size regardless of browser window size.
• Test your site in a number of different browsers (including different versions of each browser) and at all screen sizes. When using Windows, you can change the screen resolution on your PC without having to restart your computer - simply go to Control Panel and select Appearance and Themes.

Don't forget that you may want to optimise your screen resolution for mobile internet devices too, like Blackberries, iPhones and PDAs. While this can be done with your normal website, many websites opt to offer a mobile version of their site with a different URL, designed specifically with limited functionality for use on the go.

Get the opinion of a Web designer to find out how to make your website more viewer-friendly.

Website Design images from Flickr: Screens, Technographica and Mac + Starbucks.