Building responsive and accessible websites

It is a fact that the number of people using mobile devices to access the internet has been increasing worldwide. More and more people are using their smartphones and tablets to consume content and make transactions, not to mention the adoption of wearables (such as watches, glasses, and so on). The Pew Research Center reported that 12% of adults rely on a mobile device to use the web exclusively. Some researching sources also estimate that 60% of internet searches are from mobile devices. In this new context, planning your website to be responsive is mandatory.

To give you an idea, 45% of transactions on Groupon came from mobile devices from the start of 2013 (compared to less than 15% two years earlier), according to Mary Meeker, in its report, Internet Trends. Etsy has reported that 50% of user traffic came from mobile devices from early 2014. Walmart (https://www.walmart.ca/en) had a conversion boost of 20% on all devices, by redesigning their website in a responsive way. On mobile, orders went up by 98%. There is no doubt that mobiles can be crucial for conversion and it is a big issue if this  is not considered in your project. 

Keep responsive web design, m-commerce, website development for smartphones, and mobile marketing intelligence in mind to optimize your site for mobile devices. Keep in mind that the way people use their desktop or laptop is different to when they use their phone, tablet, or even IoT devices. Take into account also the context and environment when they are using the device: is it an executive using it in his office? A doctor in a clinic or hospital? A teenager with their cell phone at the bus stop or shopping mall? Consider different and potential scenarios and contexts. To give you an idea, a study by Google (2012) showed that smartphones are used in the following contexts:

• When on the way home, to work, to school, and so on
• At home
• To communicate and connect with other people
• When they need information quickly and immediately
• For only short periods of time

While tablets are also used for entertainment and navigation, desktops are more used for serious tasks or when any intensive investigation is needed. Still, according to this study, smartphones are the most common starting point when the user wants to:

• Search for specific information online
• Navigate
• Do shopping
• Access social networking

There is also a big group of users who use mobile devices as the only platform to do online activities. Make sure all your design and content is responsive and adapted to it:

You can use the resizer tool from Google to analyze whether your site is responsive or not. As other options to perform this task, you can also use DesignModo, Responsinator, Semalt, browserstack, and WhatIsMyScreenResolution (http://whatismyscreenresolution.net/), just to name just a few.

You should also consider the accessibility to your site as we will see in Chapter 6, Considering Accessibility As Part of the UX. Keep in mind that among your audience, you might have users with low vision or hearing, blindness, and so on. They are also important customers and potential customers who you want for conversion. 

To analyze your website you can use online tools such as Toomino, which adds voice navigation support to your site and the web accessibility checker. We will see more about this in Chapter 6, Considering Accessibility As Part of the UX.