Does Your UX Suck? Principle #10: Accessible on Phones NOW

Google says that it has crawled over 3 trillion websites. So how do you get your 'one in 3 trillion' website noticed by new customers? First, you need to be noticed by Search Engines, that's how new customers are searching for products and services.  Good SEO will move you towards adapting your website for phones and tablets, not only because Google recently stated that they favour responsive sites, but because SEO is about maximising your Exposure: Your Site Everywhere. If you want to be seen, you've got to be ready for all the latest devices that your website will be called to. You've got to adapt your site for mobile devices NOW, because you're already loosing customers on standard sites.

Ever Used Your Site On A Phone?
If a website isn't responsive, it simply shrinks to fit the smaller screen size, rendering buttons and hyperlinks too small to read and impossible to hit accurately. If the site isn't built for touch devices, the buttons usually misbehave and frustrate a user enough to leave.

To be Responsive, a site's components need to shuffle, resize and reconstitute themselves to the varying screen sizes they'll be called to, this is where a responsive site gets it's name, it literally responds to any size of device. With every standard website, there is a style sheet containing a set of styles for each element. The style sheet controls the size, position and colour of elements. With Responsive sites there are up to four or five different sets of styles in the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). The CSS can't possibly hold a set of styles for every device on the market globally, rather the devices are grouped into about four or five sizes and the styles are written for those.
How does a website know what size the device is? Well, allow me to put it very, very simply...Knock, knock, who's there?

Knock Knock, Who's There?
Imagine you're Customers on their computer searching for your services. They see your site in a search return and click on your snippet. A request for the webpage is sent to the Server where your Site is housed. The Server, who's job it is to serve, hears the request, locates the page in it's files and sends it back to the requesting computer.
When the webpage arrives at the door of the computer, it says: Knock, knock.
The computer says: Who's there?
The webpage says: It's me, the one you ask for. What size are you?
Computer says: I'm 800 by 600 (meaning pixels).
The webpage sends a message back to the Server: Mate, we've arrived, send down the CSS file.
CSS file arrives: Right, what do ya need? I've got Small, Extra Small, Medium or Large in Landscape or Portrait. You're a 800 by 600, hey? Here try this, it's not exactly tailored to you, but all my sizes are stretchie. I think you'll like it.

Australian Shoppers Have Moved to Smartphones
If you think Australia is behind when it comes to shopping on their phones, you're mistaken. The Nielsen PayPal Mobile Study initiated in 2012 shows we've jumped in to web shopping with both feet, supported by better security for transactions and smarter phones. The study shows that 77% of the survey group ( 3020 Australians over the age of 18 ) compared prices online, 71% checked online for the nearest location of the product or service before buying and 32% made the transaction on a mobile device.

To Complete the Series on UX
The best UX experts say that the only sure way to know how customers experience your site is to ask them, or watch them. Understanding your audience is the best basis for developing your site, but if you never get the chance to observe them using your site I hope you've distinguished some Usability Suspects from the 10 posts on UX. Controlled user testing is expensive and only the big companies invest in it, for the rest of us we try to read everything that the User Experts issue and tweak our websites to comply with their proven knowledge. Now that you know what to look out for in a user friendly website, you'll be able to give informed ideas for your site to your team.

Thanks for joining me in the last 10 posts, I've enjoyed getting your feedback, it's really helpful to know what areas need to be explored in future posts. The web industry depends on sharing new information, I'm happy to point the way to factual resources should you have burning questions about any of the points I've made in the posts.