It’s been several years since this blog received a redesign. I’ve tweaked the format from time to time, adding social buttons and various other widgets, but it’s starting to show its age, especially as more and more people are browsing from devices with smaller form factors.
And this blog does look pretty bad on mobile devices…
The good news is that Typepad does have a number of responsive design templates which apparently look good on a variety of devices with a variety of form factors/resolutions. I’ve submitted a request to our creative team for an updated design, asking that whatever they conjure up be based on one of those.
To get a sense for where we are today, I had a quick check with Google Analytics to see what platforms people have used to read this blog over the last year or so.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, 93% are browsing from desktop devices (i.e. traditional PCs/Macs, whether desktops, notebooks or netbooks), followed by 4% from mobile and 3% from tablets. (If I look at just the last month, desktop usage has gone down to 92% while mobile has risen to 5%.)
The level of desktop use is high – as is the bounce rate for mobile users – because a) this blog is most likely to be used by developers who are working on desktop platforms and b) the blog looks pretty horrendous on mobile devices. I mean, it looks more or less the same on mobile devices as it does on the desktop, which these days frankly isn’t good enough.
So while I know the current situation skews the data towards browsing from the desktop, I don’t know by what extent. To help build a case for a mobile-friendly redesign – which I want to make happen in any case, if I’m honest – I’ve created my first ever web-based poll. Please take the time to click on one of the options below – it’ll really help me understand whether there’s an unfulfilled need out there.
The poll is intended to measure readers’ aspirations, rather than what happens today. For instance, if you like to read web-sites – whether or not you want to actually browse code – on your phone or tablet on your commute into the office, please choose “Multiple device types”, below. It may not be reality today – at least not as far as this blog is concerned – but do think about whether it’s something you’d expect to find beneficial at some point.
Thanks in advance for the feedback. I’ll certainly keep you posted on the results of the redesign.
