• How mobile is your site?

    With the widespread use of smartphones (61% of mobile users now have smartphones), more and more people access websites from their phone. Because they may be accessing the site over a 3G connection rather than wifi, some websites (especially those with large images) can load slowly, and iPhones don't support Flash. On top of that, obviously the screen on a smartphone is much smaller, which means that to navigate your way around a site on a phone usually involves a lot of pinching, zooming and scrolling. All of this means that websites built for viewing on desktop screens aren't always easy to use on mobile screens.

    More and more, we are developing 'smartphone-friendly' templates for our clients. The tictoc Content Management System can tell what type of device is accessing the website, and will serve the appropriate template (computer-friendly or mobile-friendly) if these have been designed differently. So, for example, with the Goodmoves job board site we developed for SCVO there are two versions of the site, one developed specially for mobiles. Mobile-friendly versions don't have bandwidth-heavy images, and have special menus designed for touch-screen mobiles to allow users to easily carry out the things that the site enables you to do - search and apply for jobs. Of course, there's almost always an option to visit the 'standard' site from a mobile if you don't like using the smartphone-friendly site.

    The advantage of developing a mobile-friendly site rather than an app is that you don't have to develop different versions for different types of phone, whereas with an app you'd have to develop separate versions for iPhones, Android, etc.

    Some recent research has shown that users are divided about whether they want to access an organisation's standard website from their mobile phone, or whether they prefer to access a smartphone-friendly site. The research asked 15 reviewers to visit 15 websites from their smartphones, and rate them. The site that came top of the list was Play.com, which doesn't have a mobile-optimised version, but the sites at positions 2, 3 and 4 in the poll all do have mobile-optimised sites (M&S, Amazon, and Interflora).

    So, do people prefer sites optimised for mobiles, or do they prefer the normal site? It seems it's not a simple question to answer. They don't seem to mind too much whether they're visiting the standard site or a mobile-optimised site as long as they get:

    • a similar user experience on both the normal site and a mobile-optimised site
    • the same functionality on both the normal site and the mobile site (for example, the Comet mobile site only allows you to reserve items for in-store pickup, whereas you can buy on the full site, which users find annoying)
    • the same product availability on both sites (it's no good if you can't buy the full range of stock on the mobile site)

    But there are some things that mobile sites should pay particular attention to:

    • If their normal site uses Flash heavily, they should consider a mobile-optimised version so that visitors don't lose out on most of the experience
    • Checkouts DO need to be optimised for mobile - this is the part of the process that is most difficult to carry out on a mobile, and optimising this part of the process will help users
    • Retailers in particular should think about how, when and where users might access their site - lots of people use their mobiles to check prices and product specs or reviews of a product that they are considering purchasing while they're out shopping, on their way to the till so-to-speak. Research shows that 70% of mobile users said they use their phones to access the internet while on the move, compared to 59% at home.

    Here's a link to the eConsultancy article that talks about the research in more detail.

    By Kate Wooding
    Published: 6 October 2010
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  • Glasgow UX book club at tictoc

    Glasgow UX book club at tictoc

    Over the last year User Experience (UX) book clubs have been springing up across the world. Initially kicked-off by uxbookclub.org, the events are meetings where people interested in experience design can share their views on some of the discipline's best books.

    There are currently 4 regular book club meetings in the UK: London, Bristol, Brighton and since earlier this year Glasgow.

    The August meeting is being held here at tictoc, and promises to be the most popular to date. The book up for discussion is the much-lauded Don't make me think by Steve Krug. Steve's book is a common sense approach to web usability, stepping back from the concept of expensive usability lab studies and giving real-world advice on implementing user-centered design on a budget.

    If you're interested in coming along to the meeting take a look at the run-down and book a place on the event page. Even if you can't get a copy of the book in time don't let that put you off. You'll be able to learn something from the discussion and get a feel for whether the book club is something you'd like to come to in the future.

    By Kate Wooding
    Published: 24 August 2009
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  • The rise and rise of mobile sites

    There's an article in this week's NMA about how 60% of consumers think it's important to be able to access the internet from their mobile, and 65% of those who are planning to buy a phone in the next year will be looking for a good mobile internet experience. Surely the iPhone and Twitter are partly responsible for this rise?? There are a couple of things this means for the digital industry - firstly we'll all need to make sure that the sites we build are easily 'readable' on mobiles and secondly more brands are demanding mobile-specific sites - sites built specifically for mobile access. Will it be restricted to certain sectors? The NMA article suggests that banks, sport, travel, social networking, local amenities/guides and ticket purchasing would all benefit - and having mobile access to Wikipedia would settle a few pub arguments - and make pub quizzes a cinch!

    By Kate Wooding
    Published: 19 June 2008
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  • Text-only version of your site?

    In the past, sites had no real structure and multimedia elements were used heavily without any thought of alternate content.

    When these sites had to be made accessible the knee-jerk reaction was often to create a text-only version of the site. This allowed those unable to access the main site a means of reading the content, but at a cost.

    Adding a text-only site in those days effectively doubled the web team's workload as it was a whole other site to maintain. Text-only sites contained content that was incomplete or of lower quality and over time gradually became more and more out of sync with the main site. An often used analogy, is the idea of having a restaurant where quality food is served upstairs and passable food is served on the ground floor in the kitchen. Diners unable to tackle the stairs are forced to have a lower quality experience. The dual-site approach ticked all the boxes for accessibility in theory, but in practice rarely offered value.

    To counter these problems, text-only sites became dynamic and shared the databases that powered the live site. The main site would then link off to a 'text only' site (the same site, but using different HTML templates that removed all styling). This was an improvement, but it missed an important point.

    Most screen-readers and assistive technologies work by screen scraping; reading all the visible text on the page. This happens regardless of whether the site is text-only or not. Although text-only sites can help users who have visual difficulties, a better approach would be to provide alternative colour schemes or advise and educate the user on how to create and apply user stylesheets.

    To make sure that assitive technologies can make sense of your website, it is more important to structure your pages well. The templates supplied with your website will give you a good base structure to work from, but it's important that the copy you add through the CMS maintains the standard.

    Good structuring tips include using heading elements rather than simply making text bold (and bigger!) to both clarify what the following section is about and to create a heirarchy (e.g. h3 is considered a sub-section of h2). Additionally, when creating links to other pages it's good practice to ensure that the linking text makes sense when read out of context - try to resist typing 'click here'!

    By taking accessibility into account at the start of a project and making it a part of the project instead of a bolt-on as in the past, your site will be more accessible with less effort. With a little care, keeping your site maintained and accessible to all can be a piece of cake. Stop trying to be accessible and start being accessible!

    By Andrew Donaldson
    Published: 7 November 2007
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