At Modern Signal, we believe in beautiful designs that grab users' attention, connect with them personally, and yet don't get in the way of the task at hand -- whether that is to tell a story, grow membership, sell a product, provide information or something as mundane as filling out a form.
It's also important that the design fits the organization that will
"wear" it. To ensure that your website represents your identity, engages
your audience and presents your content effectively, we guide our
clients through a design requirements gathering. We will tease out the key
details that will help define the information architecture, user flow, user experience, accessibility requirements and search engine
optimization.
We craft websites with responsive design in mind so they work equally well on desktop, tablet, and smartphone, and address the pressures of our increasingly mobile-focused users.
Why Responsive Design is IMportant
A site implemented using responsive web design (RD) provides an optimal
viewing experience across a wide range of devices (including desktop
monitors, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones). And, it does this all
within one webpage. This optimal experience allows for easy reading and
navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling.
Content parity is a term that's used to refer to one of the web's primary guiding principles - that technology is an equalizer, that it provides open access to information and it does so for everyone -- no matter what device that person is using. In this spirit, responsive design helps ensure that a person who can only access the web via a mobile phone is able to get at the same information (and just as easily) as a person who's looking at the same site via a computer with a large monitor. And given that 45% of Americans surf the web via smartphones, with 17% of them primarily searching on these devices, it's not just altruistic to address this audience, it's practical and smart to do so.
You Don't Have to Start Over from Scratch
When we launched our site, we almost immediately hit ourselves
on the forehead for not developing it to be responsive! But we
realized that going responsive doesn't mean you have to start over. We
simply looked at our content, made decisions about how the user
interface would change across different devices and went to work
updating the CSS. Within a few days, our site was officially responsive.
Of course, ideally it's best to plan these things from the start as
part of your overall web strategy, but with budget and time constraints,
that's a luxury that we and our clients often don't have.
Responsive Design And Your CMS
Responsive design is a client-side technology, which is
implemented using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). No server-side code
updates are required to support RD. As such, you can continue to use
your content management system as you would with a non-RD site. Based
on the screen size, elements will change size and location, and appear
or be hidden.
Visit our portfolio to see how art and function come together to make beautiful and effective websites.
What can we do for you? Contact us - we'd love to talk.
