Archives for March 2012

Responsive WordPress Design

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Responsive Design is the new buzz-word for 2012, let’s look at what it is all about.

First some background. In December 2011, Jon posted a digital marketing review of 2011, one of the key points in that round up was the amount of mobile traffic received by web sites is on the increase.

The classification of mobile traffic in the Australian Bureau of Statistics review included smart phones, tablet computers and mobile broadband.

Gone are the days when you can build your web site, test it on your computer monitor and be satisfied that you’ve seen what your user is going to see. Chances are that between 25% and 50% of your visitors are going to be arriving on a device other than a traditional computer.

It’s certainly true of some of our client web sites right now.

mobile-traffic
Mobile Stats - click me to view larger image

Take a look at this example, stats from a client’s site from February 2011 to February 2012.

The blue is overall traffic, then the green is mobile traffic while the orange is normal PC traffic.

The below chart is of the same period and spells it out in black and white, in 12 months more than 25% of the traffic was mobile.

mobile traffic
Click to view larger

What does all this mean?

Well in the words of the Matrix’s Agent Smith, “…that Mr Anderson is the sound of inevitability” – you just have to accept that your visitors are going to viewing your site on something other than a PC.

This is where Responsive Design comes into play. In a nutshell it’s the ability for a design to reconfigure itself to match the browser width of the device that is viewing the site.

So on a PC you can expect the usual kind of layout but as the screen size gets smaller, elements of the site move or even disappear so that the site works on the smaller screen.

michael-anderson-responsive-viewHere’s an example a site we built in January this year, one screen shot is from a normal browser the other an iPhone. The site’s main menu, images and content resize themselves to fit on the smaller screen.

Want to see it for yourself?

Visit MichaelAnderson.com.au on your desktop computer, then visit the same address on your iPad or iPhone.

And all of this done with none other than WordPress – Cool huh?

Website Design Brief Template

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Website design briefs come in all shapes and sizes. At TheDMA, we have seen every manner of brief from formal structured requests for tender from government agencies to more informal phone calls! A good brief is often the starting point of any work. For us the process is:

  • Website design brief (covering the issues in the template below),
  • Written agreement on work, payment terms, project management etc,
  • Commence design and build.

For an intangible service such as building a website, we believe that a good clear written understanding of requirements is an essential starting point for getting a good result. From a client’s point of view, it helps to clarify and summarise thinking around issues. From the agency’s point of view, it provides a clear instruction on what is to be done. For both parties, it outlines how the results will be measured.

For some jobs, the website design brief can be more informal, and done through discussion of requirements. So the website design brief templates will be specific to your requirements. If you are an individual or organisation putting this together before requesting proposals, you may want to include a number of questions about project management, timelines and resources which will help you decide between competing agencies. If you are an agency – you may wish to add questions related to how you build websites, the technology you use, and your services.

We have decided to provide a generic website design brief template that can be used by people thinking about working with us, organisations looking to have a website built, and by agencies looking for a good starting point to improve their website design brief template.

We are releasing this under the Creative Commons Attribute License, which means you are free to use and reproduce this, just please attribute TheDMA as original author, and link back to this post!

Download Website Design Brief Template (.doc file)