Mobile Website Design – do I need it?
Mobile friendly websites, also known as responsive web design, are sites using  fluid layout of your website that adapts to the device or gadget being used to view the website on. To test to see whether a website is responsive just  adjust your browser window size to smaller or bigger and see what the content on the website does. If it disappears to the side then you know it is not mobile friendly. If it snaps into smaller blocks still showing you the content without chopped off bits, then you know it is responsive.

Facebook says that they accommodate up to 7 000 different gadgets. Hard to believe that there could be so many different mobile devices on the market. And there seems to be no end to the growth. It is vital that websites are built to accommodate these sizes or at least the most commonly used ones.  In the past websites were built for the desktop computer. But now there is a fundamental shift in how people view and use the web and mobile friendly or responsive web design aims to serve this shift.

It’s first and foremost about behaviour
The web is not about big images and gorgeous colours? The web is all about users. Mobile friendly or responsive web design is all about users. For the first time in the history of the web the user and the gadgets that he uses comes first. And responsive web design reflects as much on responding to the users as responding to the gadget the user has to view your website with. The website has to serve the user first and foremost. This means that the pretty web design has to serve the usability of the website rather than be a focus by itself.

In the past web designers spent a considerable amount of time designing for the functionality and capacity of different browsers such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. With mobile gadgets using a range of operating systems the desktop computer browser is no longer the standard.

Better user experience
Mobile friendly websites have as their main focus the experience the user has. Making a website work well on mobile devices means that the user has a better experience. Of course it also means that web designers can no longer work with endless pages, endless copy and endless galleries of images. Shorter content, fewer images, less information but more relevant info is the future for the web.

Simplified everything
The user is the important focus now. This means that web designers need to consider usability and simplified navigation as the start off point. How is the navigation going to look on a mobile device. Is it easy for the users to find their way around on the website when using their mobile or are they already going to get stuck at the first screen. Do they need to scroll for ever to get to the contact details or is your navigation letting them find the important details straight away. Simplify everything.

Easy to use
Web designers work with large monitors and often with several on their desks. They paint on a broad canvas.  It’s easy for them to imagine that a user will find it as easy to use the website they are designing.

However, on mobile phones where the screen is small, and there are some tiny smartphones being used, it is not that easy to find ones way around. For ease of use responsive web design reassembles the site into columns so that users do not have to scroll sideways to try and find their way around. Smartphone users are used to scrolling down though and are happy to find their information that way. Mobile friendly websites make this possible.

Bigger is most definitely better
A small screen does not mean small print. There is a trend to bold font sizes and bold graphics and also to bold and easy to use buttons. (see Windows 8 tiles and their popularity!)  And there is a reason for this. It’s easier to read on small screens.

Nothing is more irritating than trying to touch a button that is too small to point at.  Making the buttons bigger is the route to go. Responsive web design has pushed web design into using larger font. Easy to view and read content needs to be presented in much larger sized font than previously used. In print you can get away with size 7 or 8 font. Not in mobile friendly web design. You need to go twice that size.

Mobile friendly websites
Starting a year or so ago mobile friendly websites are here to stay. When 42% of website visitors between the ages of 18 and 25 consider their mobile phones as the primary PC then you know that it’s not just a passing fad. It’s a whole new way to view the internet and it is here to stay.

The post 5 Compelling Reasons why your Website should be Mobile Friendly appeared first on Yeah Can Web Design.

Polished Rock – Responsive Web Design

Different can be very difficult

For most designers the idea of being able to explore something totally different is an exciting concept, especially if it also needs to be responsive web design. Let your imagination run wild to make something unique, a design that is unusual and hasn’t been done too often. Of course one always needs to remember that in web design the design needs to be executable. That is, it has to work according to how the client would like it to work.

And between those two concepts, that is design on the one hand, and execution on the other can be a chasm as large as the Grand Canyon valley. In fact, bigger!

Perhaps there is also a touch of the arrogance to the idea that we can design anything and surely some coder can make it work. Surely it can never be impossible.

And to a certain degree that is most definitely true. Most things can be made to work as requested. And if not now then most definitely in the near future. However, there is a small problem attached to that thinking. Most special functionality that you will see on the internet whether it’s a clever phone app or an amazing website that allows you to search for a property to rent on the other side of the planet like Airbnb’s site has had a ton of money thrown at it to make it work. High end computer programming specialists have worked in teams and for months to launch the site and continue to work on it to continue to keep it awesome.

For Yeah Can, whose target market is small to mid sized businesses with an ongoing mantra that spells affordability for the small business guy or doll teams of programmers are not an option . So taking on a project that requires such high end programming is usually not a good idea. It doesn’t tie in with the target market! And the clients generally don’t understand the complexity of their wishes either. Just make it work, is the thinking in most cases.

Of course this particular project was nowhere near the complexity of an Airbnb. However, in terms of making the site responsive and working on every single gadget the client could think of to test it on (even gadgets team Yeah Can had no way of getting hold of to try the site on) it felt like we were abseiling the one side of the Grand Canyon and crawling up the other side.

Polished Rock. Very different design.

It was with great thanks that team Yeah Can had a client who showed huge patience while the team worked through issues, tried different solutions and in general tried to make it happen as quickly as possible. And yes, the site looks harmless enough. But making it responsive was the hurdle. The mountain that at times didn’t feel as if it could ever be climbed.

But we did it. Thanks to all concerned. Check it out at Polished Rock.

And no, at this stage we ain’t going to do it again any time soon.

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Home Appraisals Inc gets a new mobile website design

Mobile website design
Home Appraisals Inc depend on their website for their income. Of course everybody should consider their website to be that important but for this client business is conducted via his website. And it needed to be a mobile friendly website.

Working with a client who knows what he wants
As much as it can often be demanding to work with a client who knows exactly what he wants it never the less is a real pleasure too. Contradiction for sure. But it really does make it easier to work with a company where the CEO knows what works and what doesn’t. After all his website has to deliver on search and on sales being closed. That’s the bottom line.

It’s a pity not more clients view their websites in this manner. Let’s just put a brochure style site up doesn’t really do it for the client. Really. There has to be a purpose behind the website otherwise why spend the money to put one up. And surely the purpose should always be to attract more customers/clients/followers/sign-ups or whatever the website owner needs.

When you hand out your company brochure what are you doing it for? To get more business. Of course when you hand out a brochure you also have the opportunity of making that face to face sales pitch. Your website needs to take on the task of that face to face sales pitch as you are not going to be lurking around in cyberspace all the time to be able to perform this important function. Your website has to take over.

More business is always better
Getting more enquiries or more business is always good. If you are busy enough then here is your opportunity to increase your business enquiries and have the luxury of charging higher fees and being more selective with whom you take up as a client.

Commercial Real Estate Appraiser – Mobile Friendly Website

And we did it a second time around
Commercial Real Estate Appraiser was the second site we did for this client. We developed the new logo and repurposed the existing grid that Home Appraisals was built on to accommodate the new entity. This way client could save himself a lot of money.  Changing the top with different images also helped to make sure the websites felt a little different.

Let’s hope this website is as successful as the Home Appraisals one. It should be. Both the Home Appraisals and Commercial Real Estate Appraiser sites are sales focused and sales driven.

The post Making the Home Appraisals site into Mobile Website Design appeared first on Yeah Can Web Design.

Zacarian Appraisal Services new website

One more property appraisal site going mobile friendly

It’s great when one good job leads to another good job. In this case it certainly worked like that. Team Yeah Can had hardly completed the Home Appraisals site, adding the Commercial one to the fold, and a new client from the other side of the United States operating in the very same environment approached the team for a new site.

This time the brief was completely different. The Home Appraisal site is a full on ecommerce site where visitors are encouraged to get a quote and pay online. In the case of Zacarian Appraisal Services the client wanted more of a public relations effort rather than a full on sales focused site.

Wonderful images make all the difference
And he gave us fabulous images. What a difference it makes when the team can work with high quality, copy right approved images. It lifts a website. It’s something that clients tend to want to save on, buying good quality photographs. Regrettably.

The web is a visual medium. People react well to images and allow themselves to be influenced by great images. How do you feel at a spectacular sunset? Most people feel awe and wonder. In the same way other images can influence our thinking in different ways. So why not use really good images on your website to persuade visitors that your product and service is worth having.

Sliding site
Sliding sites are starting to get fashionable. And this site certainly lent itself to this format. It’s a newish trend to make a website scroll down rather than asking visitors to hop from menu item to menu item where each page is the size of the monitor.

Gone are the days where scrolling was out and ‘below the fold’ was something to be avoided at all cost. Perhaps the fact that websites are now viewed on small screens could have something to do with the fact that people are slowly letting go of this very ‘print’ focused concept.

Below the fold
Most people won’t even know what below the fold means. It was the term used by the newspaper industry. Newspapers were sold folded over and presented by newspaper sellers with the top half of the newspaper visible. This is where the big headline and image hat to be to persuade people to hand over money for a paper.

A print term hardly has a place in web terminology surely. After all we don’t fold over a website to wave it around on the street corner. In fact what the mobile web has done for us is finally weaned us off print. We don’t read websites anymore like we did with print brochures i.e. one page after the next.

Mobile friendly works differently
What the mobile friendly web has done is force us to scroll. Yes. Past the fold. Always. If we were to stick to the fold when dealing with websites that are viewed on smartphones, and won’t they all soon.. nobody would get to see more than one image and read one paragraph. There is no end to how far we can scroll. There is no longer a fold.

Have a look at Zacarian Appraisal Services brand new website and see what the web has done to how we handle websites. This is where the trend is going to be heading towards. Be open to this new way of dealing with information. And get used to it. For the short term this is how websites will be viewed. Can’t say what will happen in the future of course. The web has changed so much already. Anything is possible. Yeah.

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At Cheryl’s site gets a mobile website design.

Mobile friendly design

At Cheryl’s a pet friendly self catering accommodation business based in Table View, Cape Town had an old fashioned Flash website. Not mobile friendly that’s for sure. Her site needed to get a mobile website design facelift.

At Cheryl’s had been a client since before Yeah Can’s time. In fact the same website had been up since 2006. And when most people know that they should change their website at least every three years if not more regularly due to technological advances, Cheryl felt that her site was not broken so why fix it.

Sure the site wasn’t broken. But it wasn’t working either. Flash does not work on mobile or tablet operating systems. This meant that there would always be a broken element on the site when viewed on something different besides a desktop PC.

New Mobile Website Design
Finally the persuasive talk took effect and Cheryl decided to tackle her website. Images were collected, copy was rewritten and a new lay-out designed. In fact the website could not be any more different.

From a brownish background with small images, some copy and a few logos the website was transformed into a colourful and vibrant new look with tiles replacing ordinary menu buttons. Instead of the facility images, Yeah Can decided to use some fabulous colourful photos of scenes and people of Cape Town.

Of course images of the accommodation available were not neglected. Each unit has it’s own section with its own image gallery. There are therefore many opportunities to read up on the details of the self-catering facilities.

Great feed-back
Cheryl received a ton of good feed-back.

Wow – what a difference.  It is much more modern and upmarket and I love all the colours. You can get a good in-depth explanation of each room and the layout of the room is a really great idea.

Love it.  It looks very professional.

The local “Cape Town” photos of the coons and the beaches etc are great.
I also love the way your guest comments rotate at the bottom of the page.

The new website also gave her an opportunity to make contact with her client base and to remind them that she is available for bookings.

A successful conversion of a Flash website to mobile website design.

The post At Cheryl’s site gets a Mobile Website Design appeared first on Yeah Can Web Design.

Display of screen sizes as compiled by Aram Bartholl

To your clients you speak Martian
As web designers you are immersed in web design and the technologies that drive it. You know about responsive web design. After all you are an early adopter in all things internet. This means you have an eye out for new stuff that could impact on your web design business. If you are not doing this then anticipate that your web design business is going to stagnate or even die.

And in general it’s this constant new stuff that keeps web designers enthusiastic. There are brand new challenges to meet and to overcome on an almost daily basis. It’s therefore no surprise to web designers in general that a new frontier should arrive pretty quickly after the web finally arrived at their client’s door step.

A reluctance by traditional advertising agencies to accept the web
It’s taken a while for the traditional design industry to wake up to the web. Even ten years ago there were still advertising agencies who didn’t think the internet was going to matter to their clients and were convinced their clients wouldn’t need a website.

A few years down the line and finally advertising agencies are bending a little and accepting that the web will need to be incorporated into their client’s marketing, sales and promotional strategies.

Hardly had they gotten used to the concept of an online presence for their business and Steve Jobs with the launch of the iPhone changed the landscape again.

Enter Responsive Web Design
Enter smart phones and tablets and the entire web scenery has changed in one monumental way. The screen on which your customers are viewing your website can be one of thousands of size options. Never mind the gadget’s operating system. In fact Facebook have stats that shows that approximately 7 000 different gadgets are used when members use their community website.

This effectively means that anybody who has a website that does not accommodate different gadgets such as smartphones or tablets is irritating and alienating their visitors.

Client’s are not on the same page
In the same way as ad agencies are finally waking up to the marketing opportunities the web presents to businesses your client’s are only still making baby steps when considering the web as their business tool.

You might be in the frontline of development and new trends but your clients are not. They are heavily involved in their business and the trends within their product or service industries. They do not have time to keep up to speed with what is happening in the web design environment.

Responsive Web Design needs to be explained
You have to explain more. When you speak of responsive web design or convert your website to mobile your client’s do not have any idea as to what you are talking about. You could be speaking Martian or Klingon. In general they will also not want to sound ignorant after all they all know what a smartphone is or where tablets fit into the scene.

But what effect these gadgets have on their website and how it is being viewed is something they have no concept of. You have to explain more. Possibly also demonstrate more and send samples. And furthermore you have to explain that because the web is fluid and open to quick changes they need to be more flexible and open to changing their web presence accordingly.

A print brochure can be around for a while. A website has a definite limited shelf life. You need to get used to the idea that you might need to change your website more regularly. At this stage, it’s imperative you convert your website to mobile. And be prepared. More technology inspired changes to come!

A Stat that will blow your hair back
And in case you don’t believe this, then check this stat. Did you know this? Did you anticipate this when you worked on your website strategy? Nobody did…

42 percent of smartphone owners between the ages of 18 and 29 consider their phone as their primary way of accessing the internet (from Pew Internet)

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