I’ve been working on a mobile website which requires me to make the site practical and functional across a myriad of devices and their corresponding screen sizes. Usually, this isn’t much of a problem if it’s just text and background colors, because you can just leave the “width” attribute off of your element to have the text & colors fill the screen.

However, for this particular project, it requires the use of large, high quality images to be used as background images. This presents a problem the “background” CSS attribute will not expand or contract based on screen size; instead, it will go by the image size, taking up as much space as the image dimensions. The workaround is the following:

• Add this line to your CSS:  img { max-width: 100% }
• In your HTML, add the image inside the containing div, making sure to NOT specify width and height in the img tag.
• In the  CSS, add “position:absolute” to that image. In the containing div’s CSS, add “position:relative”
• It might also be beneficial to add “top:0″ and “left:0″ to the image CSS, to place it in the top left of the containing div.

What this does is two-fold. It allows you to place an image as the background of a div AND allows it to expand or contract in size based on the screen size. Heres the full code:

HTML


<div id="container">
<img src="images/bg.jpg" alt="" />
</div>


CSS


img { max-width:100% }

#container img {
position:absolute;
top:0; left:0;
}


See a demo of this technique here.

Two important things to remember when using this:

• You’ve got to make the image as large as the biggest “version” of your site. So if the maximum width of your site is 1000px and you want the image to expand across all of it, the image must be 1000px.
• Therefore, if you have a 1000px image, but are displaying the site on a smartphone, it’s still going to download that 1000px image; so be careful of image size. Make sure to optimize as much as possible.

I found the max-width technique from Ethan Marcotte’s books and articles, like this one. Let me know in the comments if this helps or you have any better solutions!

“This isn’t about faster Internet or fewer dropped calls. It’s about connecting every part of America to the digital age.”

2011 will be a year of intensifying the mobile market by bringing faster, more reliable web connections and easier, more streamlined web development tools. Wireless companies are hard at work bringing the next generation of mobile web; such as, T-Moile’s HSPA+ network, Sprint’s WiMax network, MetroPCS’s LTE network, and Verizon bringing 4G networks to 30 markets. With greater speeds, more people will utilize mobile websites which is why the company behind jQuery has developed a touch optimized web framework.

The framework jQuery Mobile has been in testing phases of its full release and is currently in version 1.0 Alpha 2 since November 2010. The final release is scheduled for early this year, as early as this month. This framework will make it easier to build a mobile website that utilizes the strengths of a touch screen interface. With the first month of the New Year about over, the digital age is beginning to grow and soon it will truly be a defining moment.

Keep the message short & concise

There’s nothing more daunting then getting a long, drawn out email that doesn’t get to the point and conceals the overall goal of the message at hand. Why muddle your marketing campaign with non–essential fluff, if all it does is detract the user from your goals? By keeping your message short, simple and easy to scan, it is more likely that a user will find the benefits, important message or whatever your promoting.

37 Signals Newsletters get right down to the point.

If Possible, Personalize

Instead of a generic “Dear Subscriber” or “Hello Sir/Madam” to open your message, why not use the first name of the person being addressed? Most email clients today allow you to include some type of code snippet that will search for that person’s name and apply it. This will create a more personal feel, inviting the user to read your content and hopefully click on your call to action.

Send on a Schedule and Amount

Most, if not all email software will allow messages to be sent at a specific date and time (usually down to the second); with that in mind, considering things like users time zones, day of the week and time of day are all important. For example – if you are on the east coast, but a majority of users are on the west coast, you wouldn’t want to send your message at 8AM, as west coast users would get it at 5AM. By the time they get to their email in the morning, your message will likely be buried.

Along the same lines, considering your message volume is an important factor. Too many messages in a period of time and it’s likely that you will be flagged as spam; too little and the message will probably will get discarded before it’s even read.

Use a smart Subject Line

Subject Lines are like the worm in fishing – they are the first thing seen by a user when your email comes through. If it doesn’t look enticing, the user won’t bite and will swim right past it. Keeping that in mind, getting to the point is critical in the subject — it will make the user decide whether they want to open your message or not. Also, steer clear of spam-like keywords, such as “Free”, “Discount” and “Promotion”, as your message will most likely get routed to the Junk folder before it reaches the inbox.

Provide Something Useful

In every email that you send, you need to provide something useful to the user. If anything else, it shows the user that you care about them and are willing to satisfy them. If you don’t give them anything besides another message in their inbox, they might consider it useless to keep getting your marketing. Things like a discount for a product or a free e-book can help garner some attention from your users.

New Balance provides a button to download a piece of free software right from their newsletter.

Always provide an Unsubscribe Link & Contact Information

Not only is this information required by the CAN-SPAM Act (see numbers 4 and 5), it’s just good practice to give your users options and to give them another way of contacting you. Again, doing this shows that you care about the user, which provides a more personal feel.

Incorporate Social Media Links

By now, you know the buzz surrounding social media and what it can do for your business if used properly. Putting your email marketing to good use, you can link back to your Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. accounts, generate some talk between users and provide yet another way of communication. All you need is a few icons strategically placed in your message and you should see some feedback.

Bride Buzz encorporates a couple social media links in their newsletters.

Design Considerations

Now that we’ve covered some technical guidelines, here are a few design related tips that will ensure you reach a maximum number of users.

Stay skinny!

It’s fairly common that users will have some sort of preview pane to view their messages before opening them in a new window. Typically, these preview panes are less than half the size of a normal window, drastically reducing the amount of screen real estate available to view your message. If you keep your email design skinny, with the important information to the left portion of the message, there is a better chance of that content being seen even if the message never gets opened in a full sized window.

Keep your images to a minimum

Likewise, images are typically turned off by default in most email clients. Because of this, you should keep important text (dates, times, call to actions) as just that – text. If that important text is not displayed because images are turned off, a user might not get a chance to see your “message” in the email. Also, another important consideration is load time. If you have just a few images, the user won’t have to wait for them to load and can get on to reading your email faster.

Sunny Thinking uses just a few images to accompany the main message.

Brand Consistently

Using the same types of graphics, colors and fonts, whether it be on your website, direct advertisements or email campaigns, will keep brand consistency at a maximum. Keeping an email design in line with the website design will create a seamless, polished and enjoyable experience for the viewer, hopefully increasing their trust in your brand.

While some of these tips may seem like common sense, more times than not, we see even the most basic tips go unnoticed. However, by taking a few minutes to include a few of these tips, you should see increased click throughs, better response and less bounces.

Do you have any more tips to add to the list?

1. Monitor

One of the most basic functions of social media is to help businesses monitor their name, brand, and products as they’re discussed in the  online world. This is a crucial point that many businesses overlook. There will always be conversations online and in real life about people, places and things and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. But a business can monitor and listen to those conversations and in some cases join in on the conversation. This is particularly important when it comes to negative comments about a company’s product or service. Often a scorned customer can be appeased with a simple acknowledgment of the problem and an apology. People want to be heard and they want people to care about what they have to say. If they don’t feel like they’re being taken seriously, a problem that often times could be quickly and easily resolved, gets blown entirely out of proportion. Look at the apple iphone fiasco. The antenna issue could be easily resolved with bumpers to fix the reception. Had apple immediately acknowledged the reception issue, apologized and said “We’re looking into it,” maybe they wouldn’t be facing a class-action lawsuit. Instead, Steve Jobs chose to deny, deny, deny and they’re in much hotter water because of it.

Tools like Twitter and Google Alerts can be so valuable in this function. With a few quick searches, any business owner can be aware of exactly what is being said about the company, the product or the service and the owner can be immediately notified if there is a storm brewing so he can step in before it’s a full blown hurricane.

2. Connect

One of the most valuable functions of social media is the ability to connect with people. Social media, in any shape or form, creates a public persona for a business that allows it to connect with consumers. Social media humanizes businesses and allows consumers to see more than just the high dollar ads and business execs on TV. A business can share more like company values, the corporate culture, other projects that the company is involved in like various philanthropies. By showing more than just the finely tuned marketing campaign, consumers are able to connect with businesses on a more personal level. This allows consumers to become more vested in the company and more willing to support the company in the long run.

Facebook is a perfect example of how businesses can connect with consumers. All it takes is one person to become a fan of the company. Then that person is updated regularly on sales and regular goings on in the business, but also on the people behind the business, what they’re doing, what they’re supporting and what they’re thinking. The next time a consumer needs a product or service offered by this company, the consumer is much more likely to do business with a company he can connect with on a more personal level as opposed to one of the other competitors that the consumer knows nothing about.

3. Interact

Once you’ve monitored what people are saying and you’ve connected with them on some level, the next step is to interact with them. This is the ultimate goal of social media because its possibilities are limitless for your business. Once you start interacting regularly with consumers, you can learn more about them, what they think, what they do and how they act. You can then use this information to better your business. And by forming meaningful relationships and interacting with consumers, you will strengthen their customer loyalty. Odds are that those loyal customers will not only support your business for years to come but they will introduce your business to their friends and family.

One way to interact with customers using social media is to provide special offers and coupons to encourage them to give you business. But more than that, you can interact with them directly by responding to their comments and providing them with useful information and feedback. Foursquare is a  fun new way to interact with consumers on a personal level. Customers can check in whenever they frequent your business. They can get special deals using promotion codes and if they check in enough, they even get the glory of being dubbed “mayor” of your business.

There are plenty of different ways to monitor, connect and interact with consumers using social media. The important thing is not how you go about it, just that you do it. By getting involved with social media and in turn getting more involved with your consumers, you create a ripple effect. Each time you create a meaningful relationship with a customer, they’ll share that with a friend, who will share that with a friend and so on. The return on social media is only limited by the effort and energy you’re willing to put into it.

So what do you think? How do you use social media? What are some other benefits and basic functions of social media that haven’t been discussed?

There are some fairly fool proof ways to combat common mistakes, however. By following some pretty simple rules within your Ecommerce store, we can improve sales, generate leads and referrals and subsequently increase conversions. Let’s get started!

1. Remove clutter and distracting elements

The single biggest step I can recommend is removing “clutter” and unneeded elements from the design of the store. In doing so, you will free up sections of the page, which can help for many different reasons. First, it will reduce the amount of information the user takes in, drawing the focus to what is most important on the page, the product. Second, it frees up more real estate for product photos, descriptions and reviews; all of which will help a user make a more informed decision. Finally, by reducing clutter, you reduce the amount of elements that load when a page is requested by the user, thus decreasing their loading times and providing a more responsive feel to the site. Take a look at Lucky Brand Jeans’ site:

By incorporating a large product shot, the focus is drawn directly to the product. You will also notice a solid product description followed by different options you can select. Only when you get to the bottom of the page will you see recommended products. By doing this, they reduce clutter on the page in order to put the main focus on the product and the product only.

2. Make actions clearly visible

Along the same lines, making an Ecommerce site have clear and specific actions is essential to a successful store. Without them, a user might get lost on what to do next (ex: after adding a product to the cart, what do I do?). This becomes exponentially important during the checkout process, as users are very quick to cancel their entire transaction if they get even the slightest hint that they might be doing something wrong; especially if they believe it might compromise their sensitive information.

With that in mind, actions to make extremely clear might include: add to cart, remove from cart, update quantities, checkout, select variation/option and any forms they need to fill out. Below are some examples.

Fugitive Toys has large buttons that clearly pull you to the next action.

REI includes a 1. 2. 3. step process to add a product to the cart, which tells the user exactly what to do to add that product (and any variations) to the cart.

3. Make product shots visually appealing

If you have already removed distracting, unneeded elements from your store, chances are you have some free space (it might even look a bit empty). That’s OK! You can fill up a bit of that space with product images that will highlight the craftsmanship & fine details of your products. A common feature found on Ecommerce sites is a product image gallery. This is quite a useful feature for users because they are able to see multiple images and it will help them to make a more informed decision about the product. Think of it this way: someone can describe something picturesque and beautiful, but if you’ve never seen it with your own eyes, you won’t appreciate it fully; it’s the same with your products online. You can have pages and pages detailing how your products are created, but if a user never sees a decent picture, their opinion will be skewed because ultimately, they want to make the final decision for themselves.

Spy Optics & Converse both use very large product shots to show detail; this is like being able to hold a product in a store.

4. Include value added or related products

Have you ever gone on a camping trip, assembled your tent, and realized you didn’t have any stakes to hold it down? Smaller items like tent stakes can help to increase sales by providing a user something extra to buy at the last minute. If they see a product that they “might need” just before checking out, they may feel inclined to add it to their order (think of the checkout aisle at the grocery store). There are a couple of things to keep in mind, though; first, you have to make these additional products stand out from the rest of the content, to draw attention to them (but do it subtly!). Second, make sure that the product you are trying to cross-sell is pertinent to the product they just are about to buy. Last but not least, it must be extremely simple to add that product to the cart so the user can be on their way in a matter of seconds.

On most product pages at Amazon, you will find items that are “Frequently Bought Together”. Items that correspond to the product being viewed are typically placed here.

5. Checkout process needs to be a breeze

Let’s go to a real life example again. After picking out a few products, you head to the register and run into a long line. When you finally get to the clerk, they aren’t helpful in ringing up your items and give you no indication of when to swipe your card, enter your PIN or sign, and don’t bag your items up for you. Pretty inconvenient, right? Making the entire checkout process simple and easy is an integral part of increasing sales. This section could be an entire article by itself, so I won’t elaborate too much, but:

• Step by step completion can help the user see exactly where they are in the checkout process, giving them feedback and encouraging them to continue.
• Error messages need to be clearly defined and helpful, so that the user can correct the problem quickly and be on their way.
• Security is an increasing concern for everyone, so reassuring the user that their sensitive data is safe is imperative.
• Confirmation of a successful transaction should be clearly stated so that the user understands everything that happened.

Swarovski Crystal has a great checkout process. They have steps to alert you exactly where you are in the checkout process, as well as forms that guide you in case of errors.

6. Go the extra mile to keep users informed

You’re wrong if you think your job is done when the user completes their transaction! Keeping them informed about the status of their order will give them peace of mind that all is well. Emails that tell the user you received their order, their order was processed & shipped, and possibly a follow up email are all key to helping the user through the end. Providing things like contact numbers and email addresses are great because it puts the user in contact with you if they have any questions. Also, adding a tracking number to the email is a great feature that a user definitely appreciates, as they like to see exactly what is happening with their order.

Will these 6 tips guarantee success in every Ecommerce store? No. However, they are guidelines that can be formatted to fit your store so that in the end, your focus is on the most important aspect of your business – the consumer. Take a look at these tips again, and then browse through your Ecommerce site. What can be improved? What can be added or removed? Whether you need to customize your current solution or start from scratch, we have the tools and knowledge to help.



A QR Code of the url www.trustyourtechnologist.com

The basic function of the code is to be scanned (laser based 2D bar code scanner – or more likely, a phone’s camera). On a phone the image is analyzed by a QR Code reading application such as QRdvark and the content, link, and info is then available on the device.

The QR Code is machine readable only, of course. But its usefulness is only limited by the application reading it. For example, a QR Code reader recognizing a URL in the QR Code will open the location in a browser. A QR Code of contact information can automatically create that contact in your address book.

SMS I love your blog

An enormous benefit is that this format can contain 4,296 text characters, 7,089 digits, 2,953 raw bytes, or 1,817 kanji. That’s plenty of information to include full contact information on a business card, details about a movie on a poster, or quick link to a product’s URL. If you have not seen it already, expect to see QR Codes appearing in print ads. A scan of the code could open a URL of the product or a special promotion.

Design QR
These QRs take logos or other imagery and incorporate them into the QR Code. This is possible because there is redundancy enough for a lot of code deterioration before the code becomes unreadable.

AVATAR's DesignQR

Structure
A QR Code contains several meta elements in addition to the embedded information being shared. Extra information about what version of the code is being used but also tracking points to help the reader application adjust for position and skew. A QR Code is from 21-177 modules in height and 21-177 modules in width.

Future Uses
In advertising you attempt to catch the eye and make an impression. QR Codes help make that impression digital. But I think this will also be a major infosharing technique. Current uses include an art gallery tour enhanced through codes to help identify sections of a digital tour or to open more information about the artist, the piece, the period, etc. Street artists tagging their work with QR Codes. Near future uses could include traffic signs auto-read by in-car readers. And future uses such as 3D QR Codes that can store even more information (in theory, an entire video clip), or enhanced encoding techniques that could store more as well.

Yahoo! Mail on iPod Touch

Early this month, Yahoo launched a new mail HTML5 App. Smartphone users can start previewing and using the new site by going to m.yahoo.com/mail. The new site utilizes the power of HTML5, looks great and is lightning fast. Yahoo was able to create something better then a native application by developing it in HTML5. Last week, YouTube released its new mobile HTML5 App to overwhelmingly positive critical response. People are saying that the mobile site “put the YouTube App to Shame” and “the video quality beats native Apps hands down.” Mobile sites have great advantage over native applications because they allow the developer to update their App in real time, adding new features and new advertisements to generate more revenue.

YouTube Mobile on iPod Touch

HTML5 built pages are not just for mobile web browsing. Scribd, a document publishing and sharing site, reworked their entire site this year to be built with HTML5. This is one of the biggest revamps involving HTML5 so far. What makes this such a huge undertaking is that the site was, for three years, using a Flash based reader to display its document content. Flash was a multi-million dollar investment for Scribd, yet they have made the choice to switch to HTML5. Scribd wanted to make this switch in order to fully achieve their vision of having a site where people can easily publish their work on the web. This vision was not possible until HTML5 was implemented.

Developing websites using HTML5 has given Yahoo, YouTube, Scribd and many others a better way to provide their services. They have made the worthwhile investment of switching to HTML5.  Many other sites will likely follow suit and make the transition to HTML5.  This trend is beneficial to the industry and will allow for much better websites.

For more information on this topic please take a look at the following links:

Yahoo! brings its world-class communications experiences to your Android phone, plus introduces the all new HTML5 mobile web mail

YouTube Mobile gets a kick start

Scribd on HTML5 Rework at Web 2.0 Summit 2010

• Equal access to the lawful Internet content of your choice.
• The ability to run applications and use services of your choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.
• The ability to connect your choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
• Competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

The FCC asserts that these practices keep the internet open allowing it to continue to expand and make leaps in innovation.  Net neutrality is the principle that all data on the internet should be treated the same and allowed to go through any network unimpeded. Without net neutrality rules in place ISPs could become the gate keepers of the internet, controlling what content users have access to, the speed of certain kinds of data across their networks or charging customers more to have faster access. (This would only apply while the data is on their network. Data may drop to non-priority on other networks.)

Large ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon argue services that use large amounts of bandwidth slow down their networks. Their solution is to shape traffic to prioritize certain kinds of data sent along their networks. For example, a large ISP could decide all of the users streaming video on YouTube at any given time are slowing down their services. As a result, they could de-prioritize the streaming data on YouTube to insure the rest of their network runs at normal speed. They also want to charge companies to use their networks; they argue these funds could be used to build better networks keeping them advanced and fast.

While traffic shaping is not a bad thing, it could be used for anti-competitive functions. ISPs could charge competitors and content providers who use large amounts of bandwidth like Facebook, YouTube, and Skype, to send data through their networks. If they don’t pay for access, their content could be slowed while data from providers who pay the fees is given priority.

Small businesses and websites could be hurt by these practices. A fair amount of innovation on the internet is done by these smaller companies who may grow into or even be bought by large companies.  If they can’t afford to pay the extra fees they may find themselves unable to reach consumers. Large companies would also have a harder time finding and buying them which could cause a sharp decline in the amount of innovation on the internet.

The father of the internet, Vint Cerf, who invented many of the protocol tools used to transfer data, and Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world-wide-web, have both expressed fear that ISPs will control content and access. They feel requiring stronger web access rules would promote competition and innovation on the internet and  it would prevent content and applications from being blocked by large ISPs.

“One persistent myth is that ‘network neutrality’ somehow requires that all packets be treated identically, that no prioritization or quality of service is permitted under such a framework, and that network neutrality would forbid charging users higher fees for faster speed circuits. To the contrary, we believe such features are permitted within a ‘network neutral’ framework, so long they are not applied in an anti-competitive fashion.” – Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium

Many large internet-based companies favor net neutrality because they fear that their business might be affected by ISPs charging them or their internet users. Other internet-based companies oppose net neutrality because they see a new opportunity for corporate growth and profit by making deals with ISPs. Some of the original architects of the internet feel without net neutrality rules in place, ISPs could undermine innovation in favor of their own profits.

Net neutrality doesn’t means that ISPs can’t manage traffic on their networks to optimize efficiency — as long as they don’t abuse that power to shape the internet or use it for anti-competitive practices. However, the internet has become almost a basic utility to some and without some rules telling ISPs how they can manage and shape traffic they could end up shaping traffic in a way that could hinder the growth of new applications and media sources on the internet. This would ultimately limit the utility and even the magic we have come to expect when we open our browsers and get online.

For more information on the debate, check out the following blogs:

The Future of the Internet: Net Neutrality

What Does Net Neutrality Mean to You?

The Absurdity of Net Neutrality

A common issue facing businesses and organizations today is a lost or stolen laptop or PC that contains sensitive data.  As a result, many companies are starting to move to on-disk encryption to protect their data. Windows Vista and Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise editions contain a feature called BitLocker which protects data by encrypting information over entire volumes.

BitLocker is a full disk encryption program that uses the AES encryption algorithm in CBC(Cipher-block chaining) mode with a 128-bit key. BitLocker is only available on Server 2008 and select editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. There are 3 different authentication modes that can be used as building blocks to implement BitLocker encryption.

Transparent Operation Mode

Transparent Operation Mode uses a key for the disk encryption.  It is encrypted by the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip and will only be released to the OS loader code if the early boot files appear to be unmodified.  By using TPM, a user can only protect against software based attacks but the computer is still vulnerable to hardware based attacks.  An example of such attack would be a cold-boot attack where a user doesn’t let the computer shut down completely. This attack relies on data to be in the RAM after power has been removed.

User Authentication Mode

User Authentication Mode or PIN Mode is when a user provides some authentication to the pre-boot environment (usually a username and password). The main problem when using a PIN is the system is still vulnerable to a pre-OS attack. Also, a PIN is great in theory but in order to be effective it must be very difficult, containing many different numbers and letters. But the more complex (and therefore more secure) a PIN is the less likely it is an end-user will remember it. Some users have such difficulty remembering their PINs that they resort to writing them down on a sticky note on their monitor, under their keyboard or somewhere else on their desk. This may help them remember the PIN but it defeats the purpose for it in the first place.

Dongle Mode

Dongle Mode is where a user must insert a USB device that contains a start-up key into the computer in order to boot the protected OS. The main problems with using a dongle are loss of the device and the system is still vulnerable to a pre-OS attack. This method is great against hardware attacks but how many people do you think will actually remove the dongle after they finish using the system?

BitLocker supports the above authentication modes in the following combinations: TPM only, Dongle only, TPM + PIN, TPM + Dongle and TPM + PIN + Dongle.  TPM is the least secure option and TPM + PIN + Dongle is the most secure.  You would think they would support a PIN only or a Dongle +PIN authentication mode.  How hard do you think it is to put in a Dongle versus trying to crack or brute-force a PIN?   Regardless which combination you choose, the smart thing to do is to use an authentication mode that requires two or more authentications.

If you are a business that needs to protect sensitive data, BitLocker is a Windows feature that you might want to check into.  Remember that no security is perfect but it is better to have one or more imperfect methods then none at all.

What is “Fluid” or “Adaptive” Web Design?

Without getting technical, the code behind this technique does all of the heavy lifting on the fly; basically, it computes how to figure out the amount of room to give certain elements on the page, where they should be placed and how large (or small) something should be (like an image) depending on the browser window size. This is a fairly new concept; so much so that most websites haven’t even started to use it yet.

Is there an advantage?

You might be asking: “Why would I need to do this? My site is fine just the way it is!” Well, there are a few good reasons, outlined below:

1. With the rise of mobile browsers (see here and here), getting pertinent information & making it look nice is difficult using the current coding techniques. Using the new adaptive coding procedures, a mobile user is able to see your site just how you intended it to be seen.

 

2. On the opposite end of the spectrum, users on larger formats (like TV’s) have much more real estate compared to a normal computer monitor. An adaptive website will expand automatically to use an adequate amount of space, thus providing a richer experience for that user.

 

3. Users with vision or motor problems will often zoom in on a website; with the new adaptive coding process, the site will keep its design integrity while simultaneously improving the impaired users browsing experience.

Simon Collison's Website

Examples

Ready to see some examples? Check out the original article & its example to get a good idea. Once you get a feel for what you’re looking for, head to Simon Collision’s site – colly.com, Jon Hicks’ blog – The Hickensian, and Couch Camp. When looking at these sites, try resizing it to see how each site responds. Try picturing the site on different platforms such as a mobile phone and take note about how the site resizes itself for such a small window.

Have you even given thought to where your website will be in the future? If it plays out how it’s predicted, mobile browsing will surpass desktop browsing in the next 3-5 years. Is your site ready for a change?