I am really pleased to announce that the first responsive website I have worked on has gone live. The site is www.yogababycheshire.co.uk. Jo is a quite remarkable person, a mother to three children and still finds time to teach yoga to other mothers and babies as well as using yoga as therapy to help children with special needs.
I built Jo’s first website a couple of years ago now and it was felt that a revamp was needed to freshen up the look and feel of the website. Over the last few weeks I have worked closely with Jo to create a new logo for Yoga, Baby! The aim was to capture something of the love that yoga can bring into a person’s life and also to reflect the fact that our children are the things we love most in the world (usually!). We have created an embossed heart with an Om symbol in the centre. The font used for the wording in the logo was Samarkan and gives the design an Eastern, more yogic, feel.
From my perspective the really interesting aspect of this website is the fact that it is responsive. Responsive websites present content differently dependent upon the type of device that you are looking at the website with. The aim is to try to make it so that when being viewed on a tablet or smartphone that the user does not have to zoom to access content. There are a variety of methods that have been employed to facilitate this including CSS, media queries, JQuery and HTML5.
Usability was a key factor. More and more people using are either smartphones or tablets to access the web and the way that information is presented to these users needs to be radically different from the traditional way that it is presented on desktop/laptop computers. The primary aim of the site is to act as a shop window for potential clients of Yoga,Baby! In order to facilitate this the telephone number at the top of every page is a link. When you view the site on a smartphone if you press it then your phone will start to dial the number. This is a lot easier than trying to type it into the keyboard. There is also a contact form at the bottom of every page so users do not have to bother with an extra click to get to a contact page. The menu is presented as a drop down list rather than having links that are tiny scrawling across the page, or worse, breaking out of the navigation area.
A map has been added to the home page that shows where classes take place and there are also links to allow a user to get directions to the venue, again with the aim of making life easier for users who are potentially lost on their way to their first class. They can pull over and get directions on their smartphone by accessing the site.
The website was also built with search engines in mind and should help to give a little boost to certain keywords that we decided would be useful for Yoga, Baby! to rank highly for. While not fully HTML5 the website does use a lot of core features of HTML5.
I am happy with the finished result. I think that the site is more suitable to what Yoga, Baby! needs to help build their business with clearly set out sections for the services that are offered as well as making it as easy as possible for potential clients to contact Jo. The real key will be if the site generates extra business for Yoga, Baby! I have just had an email from Jo to say that she has had her first enquiry via the new website. Responsive websites will be the future of the internet, if your site isn’t responsive then perhaps it is time to change that. For more information on responsive web sites give me a call on 0800 779 7829.