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Responsive Design... Speed is the Achilles' Heel for Higher Education Sites

By Bob on April 11, 2013 4:21 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Responsive Design is often a slow solution for a mobile presence

The last week or two I've been reading a book on responsive design by Tim Kadlec (Implementing Responsive Design) that was recommended by Gene Lewis, creative director at Digital Pulp. Kadlec makes a key point that others do as well: when planning for a responsive design website, it is best to start with a "mobile first" approach rather than work down to a mobile presence from an existing site created for desktop viewing.

How many colleges and universities actually take a "mobile first" approach? 

I suspect that most responsive design websites in higher education try to work closely with the original site and adapt it to small screen viewing. The challenge of serious content removal to reduce the original website (bloated from content added over the last 15 or 20 years) often is ignored. 

And the even more immediate challenge of removing content items from the home page? From the home pages I've reviewed, that's a political issue that many people are happy to avoid.

Most "mobile" websites are faster than most Responsive Design websites

The result? Most responsive design home pages I've tested over the last few days do not download to a smartphone nearly as fast as a mobile website. From a marketing perspective, that's important. Speed counts. If your mobile presence works much faster than those of your competitors you'll have a distinct competitive advantage. People like speed. People expect speed. .

Let's get specific. 
  • The fastest mobile website I tested using Mobitest (St. Mary's University) downloaded in 1.8 seconds. Close behind was Seton Hall University at 1.88 seconds. The fastest responsive design site (UC-San Diego) took 5.05 seconds to load. The University of Vermont was second at 5.37 seconds.
  • The slowest mobile site was 7.08 seconds. The slowest responsive design site was 21.2 seconds.
It isn't the size of the university at work here. The University of Virginia mobile home page loads in 2.26 seconds. It's the size of the home page. Mobile sites have fewer elements on the "mobile" home page. That's the benefit of a "mobile first" approach. It forces people to deal with the need for a much lighter web presence. 

The results were not absolute. Some mobile sites were slower than the fastest responsive design sites. And that's exactly the point. Responsive design will work best when content reduction is an important element in the initial plan. No magic responsive design star dust will make a large, cumbersome "traditional" website work fast on a smartphone.

Can the quest for speed on a responsive design website be a catalyst for serious content reduction? Let's hope so. When that happens, the web experience on screens of any size will improve dramatically.

J.Boye Web & Intranet Conference May 7-9

I was reading Kadlec's book as the starting place for my responsive design presentation in the "Going Mobile" track at the J.Boye Web & Intranet Conference. Join us there for a lively discussion of how much speed counts in the mobile world.

My 2-day "Writing Right for the Web" Workshop... for any screen size

May 30-31, Boston: "Writing Right for the Web: Improving Your Web Content," Academic Impressions Conference. Review the topics and register.

That's all for now.

Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing

Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" and "Link of the Week" selections at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/newsletter-subscribe.html

Responsive Design... Q&A with Gene Lewis continues

By Bob on March 21, 2013 3:33 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Responsive Design... Not a Magic Solution

When responsive design first appeared as a solution to the challenge of "going mobile" with website content, more than a few people jumped on it with the eagerness of a cat chasing a fast-moving object across a floor or field. Since then, reality has crept back into view. Responsive design is hard work. Mobile apps sometimes are a better solution. Responsive design will not magically turn a bad website on a big screen into a good one on a smaller screen.

Do you really want to make everything on your "regular" website "responsive"? The right answer is "Of course not, that's just silly. Half of the content on our website is garbage." But how will you decide what content to purge? That's one thing we'll talk about at my responsive design session at the J.Boye Web and Intranet Conference in Philadelphia this May.

This occasional Responsive Design series started last week and featured Gene Lewis, creative director at Digital Pulp, answering questions from a project now underway at Dartmouth College. Today we wrap that up with more Q&A with Gene. 

Responsive Design: Moving Mainstream with Extra Time and Cost

REJ Question: When a potential client first approaches you about creating a Responsive Design website, what are the most important questions you ask to learn how much they already know about what's involved?

Gene Lewis Answer: 
"Whenever a client brings up a specific need or requirement, we do some digging to learn what's behind the request - It's important to know what we're solving for. Clients are often susceptible to trends (e.g. We need a blog! Not sure why, but we need one!). If a solid strategy isn't attached to a request, it often falls flat.

"When RD is raised, we want to make sure that our clients understand what Responsive Design enables (and what it doesn't), and that it requires some additional effort (and therefore cost). Gone are the days when mobile was a nice-to-have. RD is now far more mainstream and doesn't feel like a trend request."

Responsive Design: The Creative Challenge

REJ Question: From your experience creating RD sites, is there a "most likely" barrier to success that you need to overcome?

Gene Lewis Answer: 
"We're in the midst of many responsive projects right now, and each pose their own set of challenges. If I said cost, would that seem shallow?

"One of the most frustrating things I've read time and again is that Responsive isn't really that much more work --B.S. If you do it well, it's more work for everyone involved. And as an agency, it adds an entire level of approvals and revision cycles to a project. 

"A number of RD articles have said that a majority of responsive design work should be done in code -- and not in design. While I have the utmost respect and admiration for good front-end developers, I haven't run across many developers with an incredible design aesthetic. 

"For a truly elegant Responsive result, you need the creative and front-end development teams working together. There are so many ways of creatively solving interface challenges these days that the sky's the limit -- you just need someone to make the right choices."

And a marketing note on top tasks...

I'll explore the marketing element more in the future, but every web team working on a public site will benefit from the addition of a marketing-oriented member who understands the need to make top-task completion a priority. When people can complete their top tasks quickly and easily, the marketing strength of your website will grow.

Gene on recommended reading...

When I asked Gene for recommended reading, he started with a "shameless plug" for an article by the agency's director of user experience, Sarah Blecher. Check Sarah's blog post for "9 Questions Higher Education Institutions Should Ask Before Starting a Responsive Website Design Project." No room for cats chasing shiny objects here.

He also recommended Tim Kadlec's book, Implementing Responsive Web Design.

My 2-day "Writing Right for the Web" Workshop... for any screen size

May 30-31, Boston: "Writing Right for the Web: Improving Your Web Content," Academic Impressions Conference. Review the topics and register.

That's all for now.

Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing

Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" and "Link of the Week" selections at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/newsletter-subscribe.html



Responsive Design... implementing change at Dartmouth College

By Bob on March 14, 2013 4:52 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Responsive design... from a marketing perspective

Today an occasional series on the implementation of Responsive Design at higher education websites starts. Responsive design is one answer (and a popular one) to the reality that websites built for large screen viewing do not work well on smartphone screens.

I'm skeptical of any "solution" that quickly is adopted with evangelical zeal. That skepticism increased last May after insane, frothing-at-the-mouth responses on Twitter to an Alertbox article by Jakob Nielsen suggesting that Responsive Design might not be the right solution in every case for "going mobile."

Later in the series I'll add notes from a marketer's perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of Responsive Design. So far I've visited about 25 "responsive" higher education. I'll visit more to prepare for a Responsive Design presentation at the J.Boye Web and Intranet Conference in May.

Dartmouth College... Planning, Process, and Progress

An interview with Gene Lewis, creative director at Digital Pulp, opens the series.

In late January Mitchell Caplan, managing director at Digital Pulp, wrote to introduce me to the RD work underway for Dartmouth College. After visiting the site on my iPhone and laptop, I asked Gene if he'd agree to answer a few questions about the Dartmouth work. He agreed. Today we have answers to two questions. More will follow next week.

REJ Question: Dartmouth is off to a good start with Responsive Design. That said, it is obvious from the "Phase I" label that you plan to go further into the site so that there are fewer occasions when smartphone visitors find themselves on regular web pages. The medical school and the business school, for instance, are not yet mobile-friendly while the engineering school is.

How far down the Responsive Design trail does Dartmouth plans to go? On your blog you refer to "full depth" content. Is the plan to transform the entire site? If not, how will decisions be made about what content to delete or just leave alone?

Gene Lewis Answer: 
"We've come to realize that "Phase I" is overstating it. I might re-classify it as a .5 release. For a number of reasons, Dartmouth wanted to demonstrate progress as early as possible, so we worked with the internal team to quickly implement 3 templates that were integrated into the architecture and content (no substantive changes were made). A very light version of a Responsive approach was implemented to hint at what would be coming down the road.

"In the coming months, a entirely new architecture will debut - and with it more than 40 unique RD templates that will have been fully integrated into Drupal. Nearly every area of Dartmouth.edu will be affected."

REJ Question: The RD home page opens with four primary topics: Academics, Campus Life, Research, and About. How was the decision made to highlight those four areas?

Gene Lewis Answer: 
"Those sections actually weren't touched in Phase I - they've remained unchanged for many years. We worked with the Dartmouth team for several months to completely re-think the entire site architecture, consolidating several hundred sites into a single cohesive structure and user experience that balances simplicity and the school's ethos.

"While we can't share the specific architecture until launch, we can tell you that everything has been consolidated and language has been re-tooled to more effectively balance Dartmouth's pedagogy and relevance to the world. We think it's going to have a big impact on how Dartmouth connects with its many audiences."

Next week: Barriers to success and reading recommendations

"Writing Right for the Web"... for any screen size

May 30-31, Boston: "Writing Right for the Web: Improving Your Web Content," Academic Impressions Conference. Review the topics and register.

That's all for now.

Join me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HighEdMarketing

Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" and "Link of the Week" selections at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/newsletter-subscribe.html




Responsive design, top tasks, and higher education websites

By Bob on September 19, 2012 3:33 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Responsive Design and Web Content: Top Tasks are a Critical Element

It is just a week since I'm back from our sixth annual Customer Carewords partners meeting in Dublin, Ireland. Each year proves to me that while you can do much online, there indeed is no substitute for in-person meetings with new and old colleagues.

This year I especially enjoyed a presentation by Christiaan Lustig, senior consultant at Sabel Online in the Netherlands. Christiaan's July article "The case for responsive web content: it's all about the users" helped me with a nagging concern about the rush to responsive web design that's been bothering me for a year or so now. 

The Holy Grail: Create Content Once, Publish it Everywhere

I'm always a bit suspect when the entire world moves suddenly in a single direction. 

Responsive web design has many strong points and Christiaan reviews them well in his article. But I suspected that a major reason for the attractiveness of responsive design was an understandable one: the lure of eliminating the cost in time and money of creating mobile web environments distinct from traditional websites. The new Holy Grail is a world where web folk can create content once and publish it everywhere... desktops, smart phones, tablets, refrigerators, TVs and who knows where else.

And I was startled by the vitriolic response on Twitter to a Jakob Nielsen Alertbox article in May. It was as if everyone waiting for years to draw and quarter the man had finally found a reason to pounce. What did Nielsen say? Responsive design might be OK for some websites but likely not for all websites. And most of the examples he's seen to date were "primitive" with respect to their user interface.

Before Responsive Design: Eliminate the Garbage Content

Most websites today (higher education included) contain a huge amount of garbage content that is seldom if ever used by anyone. Politics or simple neglect keeps us from any serious attempt to eliminate that content. We'll know things have changed when "content elimination" becomes a standard part of people's job descriptions and we no longer keep everything online because someone, sometime might want to see it.

Excessive content makes it nearly impossible to fix the problem that Carewords partners so often encounter: visitors can't quickly do the task(s) they came to the website to do. Transform a poorly performing traditional website to fit mobile devices and you still have a poorly performing website.

Before Responsive Design: Top Task Identification

Christiaan is quite supportive of responsive design while stressing a key point: top tasks will differ based on where a person is, what they are doing at the time, and what device they are using to do it. If that's the case, then content must differ as well.

  • The first step to get a handle on this is to do top task identification research. If Christiaan is right, and I believe he is, top tasks on a page visited at home or in an office on a desktop may not be the same as top tasks that should appear on a smart phone  when someone is out and about and truly mobile.
  • People expect to do different things on different devices. And so a single home page is an unlikely solution if we focus on making things easy for web visitors. 
The Holy Grail is "create once, publish everywhere." Alas, creating and maintaining an effective website in our complicated world might not be that simple.

That's all for now.

Subscribe to "Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter" and "Link of the Week" selections at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/newsletter-subscribe.html

Writing Right for the Web: Register for my next two-part webinar with Academic Impressions on October 30 and November 1.

Digital Marketing Strategy Workshop: Join me Sunday afternoon at the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, November 11-14.

J.Boye Aarhus11 conference... notes from a great event

By Bob on November 14, 2011 4:35 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
J.Boye conferences... special places for new thinking and new solutions

Aarhus11 was my fourth J.Boye conference... my second in Denmark, with two in Philadelphia in between.

Why does a person who specializes in higher education marketing travel to this "web and Intranet" conference? 
  • To meet new people and hear new solutions about online challenges that we all face, from health care to higher education in areas that include digital marketing and web content management.
  • And at this event, to also meet Michael Fienen from Pittsburg State University who was presenting in the digital marketing and higher education tracks. Small world for sure.
Let me share some notes that made their way to my notebook at various times during the conference, in no special order of priority.

A new era for "simplicity" in web and Intranet?
  • Conference founder Janus Boye observed that "simplicity" was a word he was hearing in different sessions in different topics.
  • That's certainly true of the mobile world. The need for simplicity may indeed help shrink the bloated content that fills most websites today. The day the conference opened Jakob Nielsen published a new Alertbox column noting that working with a mobile site or app from a smartphone was like "reading through a peephole." 
  • Simplicity is imperative. "What did we do for simplicity today?" might well be the best way to start every web and Intranet discussion.
The Holy Grail is found: a person paid to remove website content
  • My biggest surprise was meeting someone who is paid to remove content from a website.
  • For over a year I've been asking in my presentations if anyone was paid to remove content from a website. Never yet had a taker until last Tuesday afternoon when Jesper Rossel raised his hand. Jesper recently persuaded his boss to change his position responsibility to removing 30 percent of the current content at Denmark's Knowledge Center for Agriculture. 
  • Be sure that I'll stay in touch with Jesper to see how that project moves forward. He should have a great presentation topic at a future J.Boye conference.
Social media: still a challenge
  • Organizations are still grappling with how to best "do" social media. Two not yet resolved areas: who in the organization is responsible and what to do when content appears that is not favorable? Answers are determined by factors as variable as the culture of an organization to the resources assigned to monitor and manage social media sites.
  • Loved Claire Flanagan's suggestion on how to bring a social media community to life and keep it active: create a controversy to get people's attention. A social media site that just reports news and PR spin won't do it. To read more about Claire's thoughts on the role of controversy in social media, check her Twitter posts.
  • Commitment to social media certainly is worth the effort to spread brand awareness and maintain customer loyalty. Those were points well worth the reinforcement given at Volker Grunauer's session on "Integrating Social Media into Your Digital Strategy." You can follow Volker on Twitter.
Top tasks, content strategy, and mobile website design 
  • My own tutorial went beyond higher education to include examples from local government and non-profit organizations to illustrate the key ingredient in developing content strategy for a mobile world: first identify the top tasks people want to do on your site, then build content and navigation to facilitate task completion. 
  • You can review and download that presentation from SlideShare now.

Next J.Boye Conference: Philadelphia, May 8-10 2012

Your next chance to experience a J.Boye conference is May 8-10 in Philadelphia. Program details are not available yet but you can check 10 track titles (including higher education), prices, and the conference hotel at the Philly conference website. 

Next "Writing Right for the Web" webinars in December
  • December 6, 8: Academic Impressions Webinars: "Writing Right for the Web: Social Media, Mobile, and Traditional Sites." Register now.
That's all for now.



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