All together and going mobile
Each year, I spend a few days in Chicago at the CMS Expo. CMS stands for Content Management System and there are many out there to choose from. Several years ago, we made Joomla our CMS of choice.
Joomla is a free, open-source software that anyone can download and work with. The word Joomla is from a Swahili word, jumla which means ‘all together’ and that accurately describes the Joomla community, with programmers, developers and front-end users all sharing information and ideas.
At the conference there are several of the seminars that are Joomla-focused and usually close with the instructor asking questions to facilitate discussions among the attendees. The questions can be anything from “What’s your favorite extension?” to “What’s been your biggest challenge?” Those conversations and the sharing of information as well as good and bad experiences have been an invaluable resource for us at Red Sage as we make decisions about building sites.
At this year’s conference, one of our (Red Sage’s) biggest challenges was a main topic of conversation – making your website mobile-friendly. Did you know that mobile devices make up for more than 50% of the traffic on the web? A couple of years ago there was a seminar titled “Go Mobile or Go Home” – they were right and we took that seriously based on what was discussed that day and we began to research and test different options for building mobile-friendly sites.
After many hours looking for the best solution for our customers we settled on one to try out, and just last week finished our very first mobile-friendly site for Coffee & Playhouse. They have a great new online presence as well as a clean, user-friendly mobile website that looks and works much like a mobile app, only the site visitor doesn’t have to download or purchase anything to use it. Check out <target=”_blank” a href=”http://www.coffeeandplayhouse.com/”>www.coffeeandplayhouse.com using your mobile device and compare it to the actual site for laptops and desktops.
As a site visitor – which do you prefer when you are using a mobile device? A site that is geared for speed and ease of use on your device? Or a site that has all the features of the full website but is a little slower and harder to navigate on your device? There are obvious pros and cons with both, it’s up to you and your web developer to find the best fit for your business.