Welcome back to another technical edition of the Provoke Adventures in blog format! As last week was about twitter, we decided there is no better time than now to talk about your website and being mobile friendly. We live in a great boon of technology and If you don’t stay with the times your website will be left behind.

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In the Beginning…

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In the early days of the internet, websites were not full of detail, images, videos and interactive elements. I was coding back in the days of dial up and let me tell you, boy, did that stink! Websites were basically bulletin boards of information, and nothing more. If you were not one of the lucky few, you didn’t even have a dedicated line for your internet.

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How many of you remember the phone being occupied because you were on the internet and your parents getting upset? I know I do. In the early 1990’s, the internet took a lot of resources for very little gain. My main use was for online chat rooms, figuring out the dawn of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and the web browser on my family’s home Personal Computer.

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Things were far from mobile, but as we know, the internet BOOMED, and quickly, with quick growth in technology. Which brings us to where we are today…

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Flash Forward…

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The internet has come a long way since the 1990’s. We can access information from almost any place on the planet. With that, comes upkeep, and a responsibility to keep things moving with the times.

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The big problem is most people don’t realize is all this awesome growth in technology necessitates a large amount of maintenance to keep on the forefront of the world wide web. Don’t upgrade and you just ignored a significant market size as they cannot properly view your website, company or even online store.

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So basically, with great tech advancements come great responsibility.

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I know, I get it, this all costs money to implement and some people do not see the benefits in doing this. When your market and your analytics is pointing highly towards your users visiting your website on mobile, why would you not make sure you are driving users into that space. Some do not understand how important this is so let me explain.

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I know I will not convince everyone, but if people are given the information and the reasoning it’s in their hands to use it. It is no longer your responsibility at that point. You gave them the reasons and what market they are potentially ignoring. You did your job, be proud of that and never quit trying to make sure your client has the tools to grow their business online. Never feel discouraged, I know I try not to.

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I am going to go into a few examples of what potential problems people may encounter when dealing with older, legacy, websites and the potential problems your clients may face.

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Let’s start with a highly technical one, that some clients may not realize. A client has a website built 3 years ago, using code made in early 2010, approximately. A lot has changed in those 8 years, and what people need to realize is some of that code is even now DEPRECATED. 

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I know some of you are now asking what DEPRECATED means, and it’s basically this. The code is no longer used, due to security flaws, better ways of doing it and standardized ways of implementing. Code changes and evolves like everything in technology. It grows, gets simpler, more features and the will list go on.

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THIS IS HUGE.

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That statement is so huge it deserves its own line. The internet is constantly in growth and changing.  The exact same thing will happen with your phones, laptops and all electronic devices. Things that were pipe dreams 2 years ago are now reality.

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So that DEPRECATED code displays differently or does not interact well with newer code. Some of it conflicts and you’ll have a clunky displayed website on your portable devices, as it was built 8 years ago for your laptop, pc and 8-year-old phone, that you no longer have.

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I hope you see the problem with this. I am not trying to make you feel bad, or even stupid. I am just hoping to enlighten a few to slowly start that snowball moving, and we can all fix this together. It’s not always about some dirty coder trying to soak you dry of all your money. We just want to help you reach your full potential and have as many eyeballs as possible on your fantastic products in services.

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Another problem with the older built websites is the images are not always made to be mobile friendly. Think about the display on your phone, from years ago. It’s like dealing with modern tv’s and how the resolution gets better and better. The same is true on your mobile device. I have no doubt, that one day soon, your phone or mobile device will be as good, if not better, then your television at home.

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Older images appear blocky, and even blurry on your pc or laptop. How do you think they are looking on your user’s mobile devices?

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The final one I will talk about is that as the web evolves, so does the design behind all these websites. We’ve been through periods of videos, flash, and even my most favourite - frames. Do you remember frames? Imagine trying to have those display on a mobile device. You may laugh but I bet if you would look around and there are companies still using them.

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Try to look them up on mobile and you will find something that is almost impossible to view and involve scrolling and moving your screen all over the place. It’s a very frustrating thing to try and look at. Now imagine how your customer feels trying to get the information they need from your website?

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I don’t know about you, but I try to spend as much time with my family as I can and If I must spend 20 minutes trying to read your website, or message, odds are I will be going elsewhere.

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We live in a crazy fast world, and any time I can save by completing a task on the fly, I am taking it.  Website mobility helps me to do that.

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Till next time…