Keeping Up With the Post-PC Era

“R.U.D.I (Referential Universal Differential Indexer): George’s work computer with a human mind, and active member of the Society for Preventing Cruelty to Humans.” The Jetsons (1962-1963)

…Today we call them iPads

Small + Medium + Large: One site for every screen / device.

The global population has gone mobile! In this post-PC era, filled with smartphones, tablets and wearable devices we are online 24x7x365 yet many businesses lack the mobile optimisation needed to meet the shift in online behaviour; although the ability to communicate with customers is at an all-time high, connecting with them has never been harder.

We’ve all been told that information should be reachable within just three clicks but is this still the case?

Ultimately the goal of most websites is to have interested visitors contact you to get more information and hopefully become customers and clients.

You should make this step as easy as possible for the user by finding the right balance between ‘accessibility’ and ‘scannability’. As a user, you need to be able to scan through a site to quickly identify the information you are after or where you need to go.

How many times have you tapped on a Google Search result on your mobile phone, only to find yourself looking at a webpage where the text was too small, the links were tiny, and you had to scroll sideways to see all the content? This usually happens when the website has not been optimized to be viewed on a mobile phone.

The true saga starts here…

What The Heck Is Responsive Web Design? And how does it differ to a dedicated mobile site or an App?

In simple terms, a responsive web design (RWD) is a flexible solution to provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience on different devices with an extensive range of resolutions – From smartphones to desktop computers.

As the name implies a dedicated mobile site is essentially a slimmed-down version of your website, which delivers an optimized page that’s smaller and easier to navigate. The solution can really customize the user interface offering a truly unique experience for mobile users. A good choice when it might be too expensive to redesign responsively.

Keeping it fresh

Web pages must be designed to facilitate the ease of reading content, conveying a message, and lead to a call to action. This can be achieved through the effective use of layout, colours, typography, spacing, etc…

Above the fold – Stay simple. Users should feel comfortable when landing on your site. Start by focusing your design layout on a few valuable content items, such as where they are, who you are and what you have to offer them – without the need to scroll down.

Furthermore, content writers must be aware of writing strategies that enable readers to quickly identify, read, and internalize information, essentially making content easy to understand.

“Left-aligned text is the most readable alignment. It provides uniform or normal letter and word spacing, minimizes awkward hyphenation of words and provides the eye with a common starting point for each line.”

What most people don’t realise is that content is far more than just text. The use of multimedia, such as properly tagged photos, videos and downloadable documents can be far more engaging, while also adding SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) value.

However, while even the most effective user interface can get boring if the content is static, it’s important to keep the site alive by regularly updating its look and feel and adding new content. This will give returning visitors a new and fresh experience each time they return to your site.