With the promise of mobile devices outnumbering desktop PCs later this year, there’s a dyer need to build accessible mobile-ready sites for my clients. The clear solution is responsive site design and development, but some clients hesitate to get on board.
Making a responsive website isn’t always the easy way to go for them. They have to let go of the idea of graphics-rich Web pages or large blocks of content. When they rethink the page, though, their new sites take on a beautiful simplicity. These sites yield great opportunities to build better visitor experiences and improve conversions on any device.
Why go to the all the trouble of responsive website development? It lets your site respond directly to the device on which it’s being viewed. That means clean graphics and precise text scale to fit a mobile screen, a tablet screen and a desktop screen.
While designing three or more sites to fit three or more screens may be a lucrative business move for me, it doesn’t agree with my conscience or my client’s customers.
That’s what’s happening, though. Either Web professionals build separate websites, including a mobile site, or clients pay less for an HTML4-coded site and just hope for the best. The hard truth is this: visitors click away when they can’t view the site.
The problem isn’t a conflict between responsive site advocates and the old codgers of Web design, it’s often just a lazy designer or it’s often a client demanding a quick fix.
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” —Beverly Sills
Creating a responsive site takes a little more time and a little more money, but the promise of better visitor experiences and more conversions quickly replace the fast, cheap and antiquated mobile site design and development methods of yesterday.
“Acorns were good until bread was found.” —Frances Bacon
My body can’t handle gluten. I have a choice to ingest wheat bread and take my chances or to discover a better way to give my body the gluten-free buns it deserves.
Until recently, though, finding something better than tough and crumby gluten-free buns on the bottom shelf of the bread aisle hasn’t always been possible. If you’ve ever tried to make gluten-free dough, you know the incredible amount of ingredients it takes…
Start with a delicate mix of corn starch, potato starch, rice flour, corn flour, tapioca starch, amaranth flour and xanthan gum… and then forget it and go back to the store.
I walk right past the grocery store and up to Ray at Cloud 9 Specialty Bakery in New Westminster. Ray is a specialty baker. He doesn’t cut corners. He knows how to put all that gluten-free gobbledegook together to give me the mouth-watering breads I crave.
If I give in down the street and buy whole wheat buns, I may be sick later. If clients settle for two separate website solutions, they may be sick when neither one converts well.
Whether it’s Ray making gluten-free dough or it’s me giving a site more flow, we both rely on our artisan skills, our patience and our relentless dedication to the craft to create a quality product that’s good for you, good for business and good for our future. Neither one of us may save the world, but we promise better outcomes, one slice at a time.
What will you give your online visitors in 2013? If it’s an accessible website, let’s talk.
