Responsive design is simply a way to create websites that work on all kinds of devices such as cell phones, tablets, desktop computers, etc. You use flexible layouts and media queries to make the content fluid and responsive rather than fractured or broken looking on smaller viewports.
Start with mobile-first CSS by writing your base styles for mobile, then use media queries to enhance at larger breakpoints (e.g. 768px for tablet, 1024px for desktop). This forces you to start with the simplest view and then build up rather than the reverse, which (anecdotally at least) rarely goes as smoothly. Use relative units like % or viewport units (vw, vh) for widths rather than fixed px values so elements can expand and contract naturally. Flexbox and CSS Grid are powerful layout tools that do a much better job of handling layouts than old float hacks or forcing things into fixed columns.
Images. They can be hard. Do not be using a massive 4000px wide header image because it looks cool on your 27-inch monitor but it's going to absolutely kill people on mobile networks and take forever to load. Use the srcset attribute on your images to serve different sized images based on screen resolution and viewport width. Alternatively—shameless plug: an even easier solution is just to use CSS background-image with media queries to swap out the images entirely. Most modern browsers will handle this fairly gracefully, but still test as browser support can be a bit... patchy (looking at you Safari).
Typography can get a bit complicated because text that looks good on desktop may be too small and difficult to read on mobile. Use relative units like em or rem for font sizes so they scale based on user preferences (some users increase text size via browser settings).clamp() function is handy for this as you can set a minimum, preferred size based on viewport width, and maximum so headlines don't get absurdly huge on large monitors. Line height and spacing are also important on small screens where everything is more cramped... don't be afraid to add padding.
Responsive typography is also not just about the layout. A headline of 48px might look fine on a desktop screen but absurdly huge on a 320px wide phone screen. You can use clamp() or calc() to define fluid type that smoothly scales between a minimum and maximum size or just set different font-sizes in your media queries if you prefer to have the explicit control. Line-heights and letter-spacing will also usually need to be tweaked as something that is readable at one size will often look too cramped or too loose at another.
Touch targets also matter more than you think. Buttons and links need to be at least 44x44 pixels on mobile (Apple's guideline) because fingers are fat and imprecise compared to a mouse cursor. Desktop hover states obviously don't work on touch screens so don't put critical navigation behind hover-only menus. Either make your interface elements big enough to be easily tappable or provide alternate interactions. Many developers make this mistake because they only test on their laptop and don't do enough testing with real thumbs (not just their mouse pointer pretending to be a finger )).
Performance becomes even more important on mobile due to slower connections and less powerful hardware. Minimize HTTP requests, compress images, lazy load non-critical resources. Heavy JavaScript frameworks can cripple mobile performance even if your desktop site feels buttery smooth. Lighthouse audits in Chrome can help identify these issues... and they will shout at you for your sins. Listen to Lighthouse, even if the scores feel a bit draconian.
Performance on mobile networks is horrific so… optimize, optimize, optimize. Minify CSS and JavaScript, lazy load images below the fold, defer non-critical resources. A website that loads in 2 seconds on wifi can take 15+ seconds on a slow 4G connection and users are just going to bounce. Use Chrome DevTools to throttle your network and actually see how bad it is. It's always a lot worse than you think.
Touch targets and spacing in general become more important on smaller screens. Buttons that are easy to click with a mouse can be impossible to accurately tap with a finger. Space things out more, make interactive elements bigger, don't put clickable elements right next to each other. Fat fingers are real and if people keep accidentally tapping the wrong thing they'll get frustrated and leave your site.
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