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Shifting to Mobile-Friendly Responsive Theme

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Mobile Web is growing 7 Times Faster Than the “old” Web”

If you want relevant online marketing then you need a mobile-friendly website!
I just did my first WordPress project using a “Response” enabled theme that addresses mobile browsing trends. The main reason is that the mobile web is just blowing the “old” desktop and lap-based web browsing habit into the stone age. If your are not thinking about how your website works on a mobile browser, it is time to adjust priorities. Anyone or business that is thinking about gaining or maintaining a competitive edge online is in the process of making their website mobile “responsive”.

Consumers Are Focused On Mobile Browsing Devices

If you haven’t heard, the Apple IPad changed the world. Before that the Apple IPhone changed how phones are used.  The last 24 months has seen a dramatic shift in how Consumers browse the Internet. World-wide there are 9 billion mobile Internet subscribers. In the United States, 41% of the handsets are mobile browsers and that number is growing exponentialy.  Consumers prefer mobile browsers and that demands your website be mobile browser responsive.

As of March 20, 2012, this site is part of the problem being quite unfriendly to mobile browsers. A recent project (http://catfishalley.biz) is just the opposite. My early compromise in this website was to narrow the width to cut scrolling on smaller screens. Most web designers are focused on a large workspace, some as wide as 980 pixels. Other designers like a “960 Grid” system, which is a bit narrower, but huge when viewed in an Ipad and obnoxiously wide when viewed on an Android or Apple phone. This site is 820 pixels wide, and has only one side bar which was my temporary fix while I figured out how to address a smart shift to being really mobile friendly.

Response Technology Reshaping Mobile Browsing of WordPress Websites!

Well there is a change coming that at least on this site, will be easy to carry out. Like the Catfish Alley restaurant website, this site will go to a “Response” based theme in the next few weeks. Fortunately I developed this site using a theme which will soon be upgraded to being “mobile-responsive” effect when it detects any smaller screen, an Apple, Android and soon, Windows 8 OS device. It will re-size the view, re-arranging content, images and sidebars as necessary. You can see some of that happening in the first generation Response theme at http://catfishalley.biz. Grab your browser window and resize it. Then try that with your site or as of today, (March 21, 2012 )this site. You will note how on the Catfish Alley website, elements resize, move and even the menus change in form depending on how small a screen the site has to resolve to! The Catfish Alley site is a first generation “Response” theme, not yet perfect, but better than 98% of what is out there now.

If that doesn’t get your attention, you might adjust just what does when it comes to online marketing. At some point in the near future, people just won’t be bothered with dragging, expanding, scrolling side to side or whatever they need to do to navigate websites that are not friendly to their preferred mobile device. Consumers will go where the information they need or products they want is easily viewed or navigated to.

Early Response Technology Better Than Being Mobile-Unfriendly!

Response technology is in what I’d call its “First Generation” and as will all things related to the web and WordPress, updates happen fast. WordPress is really a large community of developers, web designers, webmasters and users that keep the platform on the edge. WordPress is also my businesses of all sizes including “Fortune 500″ corporations, governmental agencies and the church down the block.

This is a huge shift that will bring immediate advantages and benefits to any business that has a mobile-responsive website. First your site will be be easier for Consumers to navigate. Second, you will save money by not having to develop separate pages for mobile devices. Third, you can build “wide” if you do it smartly so that the minority that does use desktops can enjoy a relaxed presentation on their screen or web-enabled television.

Change is a Pain, But Rewarding

For a developers Response technology is a double-edged sword. The biggest advantage is that it will allow web developers craft smarter, more aggressive web-based strategies. The downside is that the technology must grow as device manufactures work towards standardizing how the various devices and mobile browsers interact with the Internet.

New Best Practices Must Be Created

As I begin updating sites to first generation “Response” technology and balance learning the nuances, options available with updating client sites, there is a build happening towards new “best practices for web design.  This “best practices” is so that as Responsive technology goes forward, it can be more about implementing change in a consistent and successful way. Technology advances are great, but you still have to think about how to use it for the highest return on time and money invested!

Edit: As of March 24, 2012 this site is using a new version of a Responsive theme which is different than “Catfish Alley”  Catfish Alley’s website will be shifted to this WordPress Responsive framework.

2012 CES In Las Vegas Suggest Big Changes In Web Design

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Web Design Must Change For More Effective Online Marketing

How content is delivered and the device it is browsed on is shifting fast!
The reasons I felt compelled to attend the 2012 Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas were completely different this year. In the past, every few years, I have gone to the CES, (starting in 1986), to see the new consumer electronic toys. Back then personal video recording technology, portable electronics and stereo television were all the rage. Cutting edge technology included Sony CD walkman’s, BetaHiFi and flat screen CRT televisions. How things have changed. At the 2008 CES, entertainment was still a center piece of the show. Then the next best thing in LCD and plasma screen resolution, size and contrast seemed was what was important. In 2008 I could already smell what was coming.

CES appeals to two kinds of attendees beyond the vendors. People business representatives wanting to buy and people browsing dream technology. The first category of attendees is pretty invisible as they do most their real business in private rooms, networking behind the scenes. The second version, the browsers, are identifiable by where they are and what they are doing. In 2008 some of the most active places, where people lingered the longest were at vendor displays where mobile phone technology was being displayed. By far cellular phone displays of companies like Motorola, Samsung and Blackberry were far busier than other consumer technology areas.

Move forward to 2012…
After about an hour on the first of three days at the 2012 CES, the future was clear. That conclusion was I’d probably not need to ever attend CES again. The reason was two-fold. One, the message was very clear that the future has been and always be about collecting data. The second reason is that via existing on-line media resources, I would be able to find out what was relevant in real-time, faster, cheaper and with less physical effort. CES is huge and just moving about the show is like hiking the Andes in LA traffic. At some point CES becomes more noise than information.

So what does this have to do with web design and why should it matter you? CES didn’t really tell me anything new. Booths focused on mobile phones and small browsing devices were the loudest and busiest places. The biggest differences is how all those devices work and how people use them to consume data. What has also changed is how use of the Internet is turning people into data. In the case of your website, the latter isn’t a primary focus and a series of blogs unto itself. On the other hand, how people are using the Internet is so important that you should be considering how you will change your approach to your Internet marketing.

The future of your on-line marketing is today
Let us take a simple metric to illustrate this change. In 2012, mobile browsing platforms will outsell desktops and laptops combined. World-wide, this shift is so massive that it pretty much renders desktops and laptops as obsolete devices when it comes to consuming Internet data. Note I said “consuming”. That means the act of acquiring, not creating information, products, or services on line. As it is right now, I would venture that you browse more on your mobile phone, IPad, IPhone, Kindle, IPod, Android Phone, Blackberry or Windows Phone than your desktop. It is likely that in the last few years you have spent more on mobile browsing devices such as browser equipped tablets and cell phones than you have on laptops or desktops. It is also likely that the cumulative acquiring of Internet data of your family is weighs in favor of personal browsing devices.

Simply put, people use smaller devices to browse the net and your website needs to address this trend.

Making a plan for the future if you want your marketing to remain relevant
If you are thinking about how this affects your browsing, time to start. The place to start is by looking at your website on all kinds of browsers even if you have to co-opt your friends mobile phone or other portable browsing device! Is your website even functional on a Blackberry? Is your site a pain on an IPad? Can you read it on a small, Android based phone> If the answer to any of these isn’t yes, your online marketing is obsolete. If your site is hard to read, navigate or a big pain in the but to scroll around, time for a change is yesterday. Simply put yourself in the mobile browsing shoes of your target client and think, “would I linger on my own website if I had to browse it on a mobile device?”. If the answer is no, time to take some immediate action.

Next: Some simple strategies for your existing website…

Run Screaming From Flash-Based Web Design

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Why Just Say No To Flash?
Flash is a great tool to consider as part of a website’s infrastructure. On the other hand, Flash is a poor platform on which to build a complete web site. Flash technology is well, flashy. Typically Flash websites offer pretty eye and ear candy to the site user. Flash is sophisticated enough to offer interactive opportunities which are important if you want your site to be “sticky”. “Sticky” is a term used to describe conditions in a website much like flypaper. Once you land, the content in the site causes you to stick around. As great as a good looking and sounding site is, one thing to remember is that “Content Is Always King.”

Take a look at a completely boring website that is “sticky”. Craigslist, is about as plain a site as there is, but it is hugely successful because it addresses what visitors need. Easy access via navigation to the information, in this case, advertisement, that a visitor wants. No eye or ear candy, no annoying lengthy load in times and Craigslist is browser as well as bandwidth friendly. Unlike bandwidth consuming Flash websites, Craigslist is a very lightweight online application. I don’t care if you have a 2400 Baud modem, you can browse Craigslist!

Bandwidth issues opens another can of Flash worms. Not everyone in the world is on a cable connection. If anything, due to mobile browsing, connection speeds for the average Internet user haven’t really increased since the average Internet user is increasingly browsing via a mobile device. In fact there are whole swaths of the United States that are still dependent on dial-up modems to access the Internet. If your existing or prospective clients are either rural or mobile, (and I’d argue that the second category is where the future is), you want to run screaming from Flash.

Finally, many Flash developers create Flash websites that are a gross disservice to their clients. While the site may meet initial visual expectations, in many cases, Flash websites are nearly impossible to update. If you stick with the same developer, this may not be the case, but I have walked away from several Flash web redesigns due to the fact that I did not have the original “raw” Flash files to work with. What you see online in a typical Flash website IS NOT EDITABLE CONTENT!

Below I have listed more important reasons not to spend a dime on a Flash based website.

1. Flash is Search Engine Optimization Unfriendly
- Search engines rank sites by “crawling” pages for relevant keywords and phrases. Flash obscures this content from search engines.
2. Flash is currently not supported by IPads and Iphones.
- Having a Flash based website means you will make your content unavailable to the most popular mobile browsing devices today! 150 million mobile Internet users will not be able to see your site!
3. Flash Intro Screens Are Slow and Annoying
- Sure, the first time you anticipate a loading Flash website it might be sexy-cool. That is if you have the time to wait. Repeat visitors find Flash sites highly annoying time wasters!
4. Flash Is Expensive To Upkeep
- Flash is budget unfriendly. Unfortunately some web developers code Flash sites so they cannot be updated at all. In most other cases, creating and adding up-to-date content is expensive and dependent on the original web designer. In all cases, Flash-based websites are labor intensive and take a developer to update even the simplest content.
5. Flash Websites Are Not Scalable.
- If you are on your second or third website, this should strike a loud bell by your ear. As with many static websites, Flash just isn’t scalable. That is, you cannot with relative ease, expand the functionality of a Flash based website. In most cases you might as well start over.

WordPress doesn’t suffer from any of these negative characteristics!

 

Modernizing Your Web Marketing Strategy

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in tune with 2011 web trends salespro web design wudman john WoodWhen I started creating websites in 1995, coding was done by line, typically in Notepad. Pages were created individually, updated individually. Eventually it was necessary to create a way to manage side wide design changes. Cascading Style Sheets solved that. As the Internet developed, so did the ways people access the Internet. The browsers, content available, and hardware grew up as well. As technology has advanced, so has the ability to network a business, product, or service on-line.

A lot of businesses, especially smaller companies, are still relying on old technology websites.  “Brochureware” style, static websites, which worked well back in the days of hand coding, are competitively disadvantaged when a business needs to proactively market on the Internet. These static websites are also web marketing management nightmares. Dated webs designs are also very unfriendly to mobile browsing devices and may not display properly in modern browsers. These old-style websites tend to not have the ability to network where people are or use multimedia as it is being consumed today to share information.
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