Are Simplier Websites in Our Future? (6 posts)

  • There is a lot of buzz in the web design community that with the growth in mobile, we will need to start considering the impact our web design has on mobile viewing. Much of the talk is about simplifying the designs and not including resource intensive apps.
    Has anyone here started to give any thoughts to this? What are you considering? 

  • @michaelpingree

    We absolutely are considering this.

    We’ve built a number of mobile friendly sites on WordPress using WP-touch, and now we’re building out our first group of “responsive” websites.

    If it works out that more than 50% of our site traffic will be from a mobile device by 2014, then we’ve all got to be ready, or risk losing that traffic to the competition.

  • @michaelpingree simpler websites are a great way to stand out. I’ve been pushing for ‘simple’ and spacious every time I work on a website.Mobile is reminding us all that you don’t have to scream everything all at once – the best websites give you a very obvious first step to take, whilst having all the important info easily accessible for those that want to dig.I’ve recut a client’s website so that its landing page so that it is just a search field with 4 ‘featured product’ buttons underneath. This translates really well to mobile. This client has a production library of roughly 500 products and the current website pits visitors into sensory overload.You can go too simple though. My current website is really lacking the detail reqd. It’s lacking a lot actually, but its a placeholder while my new one is created.Good design is an amazing thing – it really reduces the amount of thinking that someone needs to do. It can separate from the rest and provide a huge increase in traffic conversion.

  • mine is  simple, just a billboard  really,  but  it  would  be way too busy for mobile…i dont see how  anyone  could   even  use an average  website on  the teeny thing…but i dont even havea phone…

     my  goal was   to show enough great  inventory on the front page , at a glance that the right person would   go…wow i want to go there…and thats what we did..

    i like  <a href="mailto:mats.@matfitzgerald“>mats.@matfitzgerald button idea….  easy and  clear is  good …dont make us jump  thru  a bunch of  hoops  just to see what  youve got…that always  seems wierd to me and i rarely do it… 

  • @michaelpingree I think that simple websites, could be better described as websites with clarity. The focus has shifted from cluttered websites to :

    1. Targeted – A home page must be lazer focused on what you want the visitor to focus on. It must be super simple and obvious to the visitor  what you offer, how it works and what to do next. 
    2. Call to action – large buttons, the correct colors  and large fonts help  help communicate your message simply.
    3. Responsive –  There is a lot of debated on this topic mobile vs responsive. I favor responsive which simple means that your website automatically re adjusts to the size of the screen your visitors are viewing your website on. From desktop to tablet to mobile.
    4. Lingo - Using simple language to explain what you do, almost like teaching a child. Often what happens is we explain things based on what we know and assume others understand. Kind of like when doctors talk about an illness and you are left scathing you head and thinking … so what does that mean ?
    Well that’s my 2 cents. I researching this topic as a designer quite a bit and re aligning our brands accordingly.

  • Morn’n Folks.

    Funny, this is a discussion I had back in 2008 on the Ryze networking platform. It’s when we started building specifically for mobile in some niches.  

    One major thing to remember is SEO must also apply to any website so going TOO simple and you lose your positioning.  The technologies have caught up, to a certain extent, since I was studying this (in 2006) and up to today. Cell phone platforms got a lot more sophisticated since then. They render HTML and other languages much better now than they did 10 years ago.  It is not really necessary to design specifically for small screens now as it was say, 5 or 6 years ago.

    A really busy website may not render perfectly but more to the point, if no one can find it in the SERP’s it won’t render at all, eh?

    Eileen 


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