Entries Categorised as 'Web Design'

5 Reasons Not to Develop a Mobile Site

June 9th, 2011 · 3 Comments · Development

Every product has a purpose, and every product has an audience, right? And people always say that you shouldn’t try to be all things to all people, right? So, when it comes to developing a web site, why should you automatically feel the need to develop a mobile-specific annex of your desktop-friendly website? Here are my 5 reasons as to why you should think twice before developing a mobile website:

Existing numbers don’t stack up
If you have a current site and you use Google Analytics, it will inform you as to the percentage of existing traffic that comes from mobile devices. If you are looking at 1% out of 500 visitors a month, then you might want to ask yourself whether expenditure per visitor required is better spent elsewhere on web development.
Desktop optimised site works fine
Notwithstanding the lack of certain elements of functionality, it’s more than plausible that your site design works perfectly fine in a mobile browser, even if that means forcing users into landscape mode and having to use a little zoomify. When considered in conjunction with point 1, these alone are compelling arguments.
You don’t know better
Following on from point 2, “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Mobile users will frequently find themselves in mobile website hell, when they are stuck on the mobile-version, but in reality want to be on the desktop-version, and are stuck in a dead end. A poorly designed mobile site, with restricted information for the sake of a “speedy” download isn’t a great user experience, and good UX, as was pointed out in my piece Things to Learn about Developing & Managing Product, is a feature.
Organisation & Content
When developing for multiple versions of your website, it makes sense to have the content stored in such a way that you are drawing it down from a single repository, rather than keeping multiple versions of the same content up-to-date. To this end you should likely get all your ducks in a row before actually forging ahead. Making sure your content will work across the required set of devices, assuming it is more than just the written word, is also a key deciding factor in development timelines.
Why do today, what you can do tomorrow?
Unless you are developing a new site, and mobile is critical to your business, you don’t feasibly need to ensure that you have a mobile site right off the bat when launching an updated version of your site. Breaking development into phased processes makes the cost easier to swallow, the work easier to accomplish and allows for an all round better product to be delivered to your end users by the developer.

So there you have it, 5 points as to why you should reserve the right to develop a mobile version of your website, and to do it later.

Google Preview … When Fallback Fails

November 22nd, 2010 · No Comments · Development, SEO

This morning I got into an interesting back-and-forth with a couple of guys I know on Twitter. They were making jokes about the Jaguar website and its design, along with the screenshot in Google Preview, of which I have written before about Flash websites failing to show up properly. I was intrigued though to find out, that unlike most typical websites in Flash, Jaguar had actually made the effort to built their site entirely in an HTML lateral universe, like-for-like. So why indeed is the jaguar.com site not showing up properly in the Google preview?

Here are my screenshots of the 3 states of jaguar.com:

My initial deduction would be that the Google bot is executing the Javascript successfully but then finding that there is no Flash, but then if this were the case, then why do other sites fallback perfectly ok? Surely SWFembed is designed to understand this case, or is the Google Bot actually reflecting that it retains the Shockwave Flash add-on? If so then it would be time to call bullshit on Google.

That being said, if you disable JS on the site, the fallback doesn’t occur. So the Flash movie is being applied by the Javascript, then why in fact is the HTML content not shining through at this point? Upon closer inspection, their lo-fi version of the site has a default setting in CSS of “display: none”, which of course means it won’t show up unless JS switches the CSS settings, but then again, this still doesn’t quite explain why the missing plug-in icon is showing in the preview screenshot.

As one Flash developer friends points out, given the quality of the animations and what they are doing with the Jaguar site, it begs the questions why they bothered to develop the site in Flash at all. I see no impediment to creating exactly the same version from Flash to HTML and that HTML needn’t be the “poor relation”. Indeed, the site would definitely benefit being “sans Flash” and is easily replicated.

A closer look at the code begs a whole other set of questions though! Jaguar might do quality cars, but their website code doesn’t quite engender this brand focus. Whatever it is that is breaking the process that allows the HTML fallback to come through for the Google snapshot bots to capture the website in all it’s glory, it is contained in the mess of non-standardised code that makes up the site.

Whatever way you look at it, as I have said already, ensuring that your site is coded in the best manner and presents itself in the best light is the most important factor. Any web site is of course a marketing/information tool and how you present it reflects on you.

UPDATE – 24 Nov, 2010 – It turns out that if Google Preview bots are fetching the page from the Google cached view of your site, then they will execute the JS contained within the page, this includes Google’s own Analytics tracking code, which explains why they are generating hits in GA. Time to call bullshit on Google I suppose …

Calculating Amazon Kindle List Pricing

November 19th, 2010 · No Comments · Product

I am not a mathematical genius, but I can still do basic math like 2+2 and 15% of £8.99, but Amazon have seemingly turned the art of basic arithmetic into something that requires a PhD. Surely when they ask you for the list price of a Kindle eBook you would expect them to ask you for the final price to appear on the site, and from which they can then deduct the VAT, eventual royalties and any digital delivery charges.

I must say that I have always respected Amazon. Not for their amazing design sensibilities or incredible UI, but because their no nonsense approach to doing business on the web has frequently led to industry accepted standards in UI and Layout. That being said, in this instance, they have really turned the simplest task into an impossible mess … Either that or I am a complete idiot … Watch it!

For those of you who are not familiar with the process of publishing your eBooks to Amazon for Kindle, here is a screen shot of the relevant part of the publishing screen:

As you can see they have neatly included a nice event to trigger the update of the anticipated royalty per eBook, but when it comes to anything else, how am I supposed to figure it out? Indeed, if they know the list price I want, they know the size of the file and any charges they need to levy in respect of that, and they know what royalties to pay, surely they can just as easily do the math for the respective selling territories?

I have contacted Amazon, but the frustration as per usual is that any response takes days, not minutes. Surely they can validate a price change and don’t need to review the eBook every single time! It seems to be a bit redundant in this day and age to have to tell Amazon how to build better forms, or design for their web site, but in this case it most certainly makes sense to call bullshit on this online shopping behemoth.

Any bright sparks out there with an idea on how to calculate up the price for an £8.99 or $14.99 end point?

Why You Need More Than Flash

November 12th, 2010 · 4 Comments · SEO, Web Design

A while back I wrote a scaving piece on FWA and why their site was just another typical and poorly built web site. Unfortunately, the piece got stuck in Rob Ford’s throat as he ate breakfast and the net result became that I was censored by my then employer. Perhaps understandably so, who can blame him or them, I was just bummed out that he didn’t invite me to his latest book launch and signing … oh well …

Anyhow the piece I wrote yesterday about the changes going in Google since “Instant” rolled out the door continues to prove exactly the same points I made some 6+ months ago, that you can’t go building flash sites on less than stellar foundations. I think the appended screenshot rather makes that point:

I won’t start on the whole Adobe versus Apple rant because this isn’t even about Flash being dead or the rise of HTML5. Nor do I care to rant on about The FWA, because I wouldn’t want to make Mister Ford choke twice on his breakfast, but it’s ironic to say the least. This is purely about visual marketing and how you sell your site to the masses with the available means

Having worked on a bunch of Flash “ad sites” where the client bought into the concept but considered less the HTML under-pinnings or the SEO impact of any of the work in Flash, it’s nice to see that the issues surrounding HTML and SEO on Flash-only sites are being brought to the fore again through these new instant previews in Google, and that clients at least might begin to actually kill off useless flash intros or Flash-only sites and enhance their content for all audiences.

Frankly speaking, if I saw a preview and it has a massive “X” in the middle of the page with nothing else, I wouldn’t bother clicking through. Your site’s click-through search traffic is clearly going to suffer as a result, and no on likes that idea. Google’s new instant preview brings eye candy to the fore, and large visuals with enticing images are going to be part of SEO going forward, there’s no doubt about that.

Single Page Website SEO

September 21st, 2010 · 6 Comments · SEO, Web Design

I’ve talked before about a single page web site that I built for a friend who shoots headshots in London, and how I optimised the site to help drive business to her otherwise off-the-radar venture.

Increased traffic & improved ranking

It has been a while since I last worked on the site, and wrote about it, but after some recent investigations, I can see that in the 6 months or less since the site was up and running it now scores on the front page of Google for the core terms that we were targeting.

Not only that, her traffic is rising and right now is increasing at a rate of 50%-100% month-on-month which means those better placed rankings are helping drive traffic as much as the best spot on the Google Places map. This proves the point that Local Business center can help drive initial traffic, and get you out of the blocks fast, but at the same time you do need to nurture the site and improve your natural search ranking.

Highly competitive

There’s no doubt that in a highly competitive market place it is hard to drive traffic, and believe me capturing the attention of interested parties, as much of holding their attention once they get to your site is another challenge, but fighting your corner, especially when the competition is throwing everything at they can at promoting themselves is tough.

I have noted on more than one occasion that business have been changing their names in Google places all the time, performing the usual tricks of keyword stuffing and more, but to no avail it might seem. Of course you can get all the traffic in the world, but if you can’t convert potential customers with an enticing site and great product once they get there, what good is it?

Where to go from one page?

The obvious question, is where to go from here? And of course from 1 page you can only go to 2 and 3 and 4. It’s a rather natural and seamless progression! But this brings in other aspects of SEO and how to best play with a growing web site.

Content added should be well linked, clearly worked into the UI, and highly sharpened for the purpose of cutting through to the top of the possible search engine rankings.
Any attempt to add content should include a goal to try and generate site links from Google search, whether that is possible or not. Always follow best practice.
You need to retain focus on your core identifier keywords and work merely around the periphery, trying to enhance visibility of the site for a wider range of inclusive 2-3-4 word phrases.
That being said, with a very niche product such as “headshots”, where the core identifier is one word, you need to be careful in not overdoing your optimisation and start to get penalised for what might appear to be keyword stuffing.
In growing, you also need to reach out to your customer base and ask already happy clients with web sites to post testimonials and to link back to your site, or even better simply pass on your name for word of mouth business.

Needless to say, as with anything web site related the hardest bit is always getting the content up and running, whether you know what to do with it or not. As a small business owner trying to cover all bases it is always hard, more so when you are thrown into a technical world you know nothing about. My experience, working with my friend, shows that even its possible to attain effective results with a minimum of input, and with even more effort you could do a lot better no doubt!