Tag Archives: responsive web design

Latest websites designed

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image of www symbolWe’ve just completed two websites recently- both golf related.

The first one is for a young Carnoustie Based golf professional, Katy McNicoll. She wanted a dark, portfolio look with a simple layout and the ability to upload content and images herself. Take a look at Katy’s site here, and follow her on Twitter – you can do that from her home page.

The second new site is for the Angus County Golf Association.  They wanted a site where several of the executive could contribute news and results throughout the year, plus the ability for their members to enter competitions online. Take a look at the ACGA site here.

Both of these sites are responsive, which means that they adapt to any screen size.  Ideal for mobile devices, or small tablets.

 

 

 

Do you need to get your website mobile?

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image of man beside a www symbolSurfer’s habits are changing rapidly. No longer do they do all of their browsing on large screened PCs or laptops. Tablets and smartphones will increasingly become mainstream alternatives for surfers, and therein lies a challenge – does your website cater for smaller screen sizes?

According to Adobe, 62 percent of smartphone users said that they had bought physical goods from their smartphone devices in the 6 months to February 2011, and by all accounts that is set to increase.

So the world wide web is changing and businesses need to think about how to adapt their online offerings to compete.

Step 1 – look at your site on a mobile smartphone. Is it easy to navigate? Can you retrieve all the information you need? Can you buy what you want to buy?

What does a good mobile site look like?

  • It should be easy to read
  • You shouldn’t have to scroll left and right to see information
  • You might have to zoom, but it should zoom intelligently
  • It should load quickly
  • You should be able to do everything it says you can do.

If it doesn’t work very well. Don’t panic!

Step 2 – find out how many people are accessing your site via mobile browsers.

If you run google analytics, the information will already exist in your reports. Expect the figure to be low, but also expect that this will increase over time.

Step 3 – talk to your web designer about your options – there are several available to you:

  1. consider redesigning your traditionally built site to look/work better on mobile.
  2. build a separate mobile site that kicks in when someone using a mobile device visits.
  3. redesign your site using responsive design so it will automatically present itself well regardless of browser size. Check out this great illustration by James Mellers by changing the size of your browser window.
  4. build your next site with all browser sizes in mind.

Of course all of these options cost money so my advice would be that whilst you don’t need to rush out and rebuild your site tomorrow, the next time you want to redesign your website, bear in mind the changing surfing habits of your users and design your site accordingly.