Right now someone is looking at your website and hating you for it. They can’t get it to load correctly, it’s slow, and when it does work, they can’t find what they want.
Are they using an outdated computer? Do they have a virus? No, they’re using the latest in technology, a smart phone, and you’re paying no attention to them.
Depending what type of business you run, your site is probably getting between 10-30% of it’s total traffic from mobile. Can your business afford to turn away almost ? of it’s customers?
So what is mobile and why is it valuable traffic?
Mobile is everywhere, it’s the device in everyones pocket, it’s that google search during dinner to find out where to go for some ice cream, check a sports score, or find out how close a friend is with a social map. Mobile is a cellphone, it’s a tablet, it’s a small screen device.
Mobile devices have modern browsers. They support HTML5, CSS3, and more. But for the most part they don’t support Adobe Flash, and where they do, it’s slow, buggy, and likely to crash their device.
Mobile visitors are focused on what they want from you and your site. They want speed, they want to complete their task, whether it be to find your hours, place an order, or just see what’s on special today.
What they don’t want:
Loads of big graphics slowing them down
Needless happy talk
Confusing navigation
To scroll needlessly to read
Not be able to read because the text is too small
To be redirected to a mobile site with content they didn’t search for
Give it a try, use a smartphone to try and navigate your site, find your hours, find your businesses’ phone number. Can you? Does it take several minutes? Is there a long load time as giant photos load? Does your site even work because it was built in flash?
Wouldn’t your customers be better served with an easy to use site, where they can find the information they want, and make their purchase from you?
It may only be 20% of your website’s traffic. But can you afford to ignore their needs? Or should I say, can you afford to have them ignore you.
—James
4 Tips For Using Font-Face
March 14, 2011
These are just some tips I've found in my usage of @font-face to help you out on your journey.
One
General rule, for now, don't use @font-face for copy, unless you have a very good font. All the browsers on Windows tend to render @font-face fonts differently at the moment, some being very jagged and hard to read, others, like IE9 render it beautifully. But until Firefox and Chrome get their font-rendering updated, stay away from body copy. headlines and large type only.
Two
If you host your own site and don't require a ton of bandwidth, Font Squirrel is your friend. Free fonts, and an @font-face generator for changing your fonts (that are licensed for web use) into compatible files for all browsers.
If you need to watch your bandwidth, and don't care to pay (depending on your monthly pageviews), Typekit may be for you. They offer a large selection of licensed fonts from foundries like Adobe, P22, and Veer. With a free trial subscription (with a much smaller library) and plans up to $100/year is a great place to start if you want a hosted solution to custom fonts on your site.
Three
Just because you're providing the fonts, don't forget to specify backups in your font stack! It sometimes takes a few seconds for your fonts to load, and if you don't provide a fallback, there may be problems with elements popping into existance and rearranging the page!
Four
Finally.. for the love of god don't use Comic Sans. Please.
—James
The Slow Spiral
March 1, 2011
We manage quite a few sites at RDG, and I try to make a habit of checking browser stats every few months just to keep up with changes in the market. I was doing that today and figured, what the heck, might as well write about it!
IE
Thankfully the death of IE6 is near, but it seems that the winner of the browser wars just won't die without a fight. It's been sitting near 5% for quite a few months now, loosing a few tenths of a percent regularly.
IE7 is also on the decline and IE8 is showing gains every quarter of 2010. The release candidate of IE9 is even starting to show up from early adopters, and looks to, hopefully, rocket out of the gate.
Firefox
With IE6 and 7 on the decline, Firefox has seen a slight increase in usage by switchers, and the beta of Firefox 4 is making appearances around, but not in any significant numbers. We'll have to wait for launch day and see how well people adopt 4.0.
Safari & the Continued Rise of Mobile
Safari looks like it's taking up the seat right behind Firefox, but upon further research into the numbers, most of Safari's usage is on mobile devices. I didn't split the numbers, but I did copy the mobile usage on Android/IOS onto a new column for future reference.
Chrome
Chrome has come onto the scene like a lion, since its debut it's gained a significant portion of the market, 9.13% for February, and on the cusp of overtaking IE7.
This was a project I did for a friend, she makes and sells fused glass plates, bracelets, and other such on Etsy.
The purpose of the redesign was to give her a more professional look and feel, but still have a little fun with it, to showcase her glass work, and be a central point to access her social feeds. The site also had to be flexible to accommodate special events and future features, including possible video tutorials.
AJAX loading of her blogger content and twitter feed, as well as etsy store widgets
One of my first HTML5 sites
The image slider was fun to build, all the javascript for it was custom built as something I could re-use on sites either personal or for work. I've since been working to improve its functionality to handle multiple image sliders per page, but that's for another post.
—James
Hello, world.
February 15, 2011
Hello, world.
This is the start of something new for me. Actually working on my own site, tooting my horn, and venting about all the things that need ranted about.
If you know me, you know I've been trying to work on this site for the better part of four years, with lots of slacking (*cough*WoW*cough*) in between. But I'm trying to change that. I set myself a few goals this year:
Work on your site, ya twit!
Try to do more projects in my free time, either paid projects or just something to help learn a new skill.
Write more. Mostly about the web, some about things I do, projects, just about anything I can come up with that sounds good.
So, that's the goal for the year. Lets see how it goes from here on out!
After the site is designed and up and running, I believe the next writing I do will be about the site I did for Amy Kirkman Glass Studio. Look for that in the near future, but for now, on to the coding!
