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Rosewood’s Guide For Website Mobile Optimization

a smart phone and laptop both showing the same website

Phones have changed the way we think about web design overall for mobile optimization. A website must be responsive, meaning it will adapt and resize based on any sized device. Once, long ago in the 90s and early 2000s, websites were primarily designed for the one browsing device: computers with keyboards, mice, and square or horizontal monitors. (Need a blast from the past? Here’s the original 1996 Space Jam website still live.) Websites still need to work on computers, but many now browse the internet with their phones. As a result, websites need to be optimized for mobile devices to look good, load quickly, and be responsive. Smaller, vertical touch screens, specific operating systems, and cellular data bring different design considerations than mouse and keyboard. To provide an ideal experience for your users and potential customers/clients, you need a website optimized for mobile.

The Importance of Mobile Optimization

You probably use a smartphone to browse the internet all the time. When you’re working, walking, chatting, or just bored. You and everybody else. Touchscreen smart phones have completely changed internet browsing over the last 15 years by providing constant easy access. Today, over 62% of website traffic comes from mobile devices, and over 92% of users access the internet with a mobile phone. Similarly, 83% of the world’s population has a smartphone, nearly double the number of households with a computer. Many only ever access the internet and your business through a mobile device.

Those numbers alone prove mobile optimization is crucial for your business’ website. Most users are likely visiting with their phone. It only becomes more important when considering that the third most common task on mobile devices, right behind playing games and listening to music, is browsing social media. Since 55% of consumers discover new brands on social media which they primarily browse on their phones, most new potential clients or customers are first visiting your website with a mobile device. Their first experience with your website should be a painless one to give them a proper impression. Mobile optimization is also important for current and returning users. 55% of users also use their phones to make online purchases. An optimized website ensures they have a seamless experience and are more likely to buy from your business and return.

Mobile Optimization Tips for Your Website

There’s a lot that you can do to optimize your site, and you may not be a web design wizard. That’s why Rosewood has some easy tips to help you start thinking about optimizing your website for mobile users. 

  1. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Tool – Google has made a convenient and simple tool that tests how mobile-friendly your website is. It will quickly help you discover any issues in your mobile optimization. Enter your URL or even the website’s code, and the tool will crawl your entire website for several minutes. The tool will then list any issues in your site’s mobile optimization. Google regularly crawls websites for mobile optimization itself, ensuring they should be populated on mobile searches.
  2. Design “Mobile First” – When creating a new site or redesigning your old one, it’s a good practice to design a website that prioritizes mobile use over desktop computers. Many users discover businesses and browse the internet with only a mobile device. Mobile sites can still function on a desktop, but a site designed primarily for computer use can leave mobile users frustrated with a dysfunctional site. When designing, think about small screen sizes and clean aesthetics.
  3. Create a responsive website – A responsive website is one that adjusts to a device’s screen. Smartphones have a variety of screen sizes. To accommodate these different screens, websites scale up or down. A responsive website will keep elements visible and text readable as it scales. Many modern web design platforms include responsive functions or plugins to easily make your site response. They also allow you to view your site as it would appear on mobile devices.
  4. Easy Visibility – Ensure all the essentials to navigate your site, like menus, search bars, buttons, and any text are immediately visible on a small screen. This will also make them easy to interact with on a touchscreen, the primary way users will interact with your site on a mobile device. If users need to zoom in on your site to hunt down information or touch the right element, they are far more likely to become frustrated and leave.
  5. Reduce the File Size of Your Images – Users hate loading times and big images are often the guilty party, especially when users are on slower internet or data connections. Resizing or compressing your photos reduces file size so they load faster on slower connections. 
    1. Resizing means reducing the overall resolution of the image to make it smaller. It only wastes data for an image that never displays large than 400 pixels wide to be loaded at 4000 pixels. Cutting down on that extra resolution, will shorten its load time. Be careful to not reduce the image below its display size, or it will lose quality as it stretches. You can resize multiple photos simultaneously with Bulk Resize.
    1. Compression is an alternative to resizing that keeps photos the same resolution and instead reduces the file size by using math to simplify data. It isn’t magic though, and too much compression can also jeopardize quality. Use Batch Compress to compress photos in batches.
  6. Pop-ups For Mobile – Every website has at least a few pop-ups to get a user’s attentions. However, they can be more obstructive and disruptive on mobile device screens than desktop browsers. You can try removing pop-up elements altogether to create a more seamless browsing experience, placing the elements on the site. If you are using pop-ups, use only a few and ensure they only cover a small portion of the screen and are easy to close. 

Your Digital Space

You know all too well that your website is essential for your business. It’s how people discover, learn about, contact, and purchase from you. It’s your storefront or office on the virtual streetside and just like in a physical location, you want to ensure customers have a painless, seamless, and pleasant experience. Optimizing your website for mobile with these tips is a great start to ensure your potential customers or clients are less likely to leave frustrated. Curious about other ways to update your site’s mobile optimization? Maybe you think it’s time for a redesign? Rosewood’s website design team will be happy to help. 

Finger about to tap on a touchscreen smartphone
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AI & Web Design: What You Should Know

Person using a computer with a holographic screen with an audio wave in the top left corner.

Thinking about or didn’t know you can use AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning to design your website? Both can design powerful, customer-facing tools that make your website a better experience, but they come with limitations. We cover the advantages and disadvantages of AI plugins and machine learning for your business’ website.

The Versatility of AI and Web Design

Today, we’re only encountering AI more and more. You have probably interacted with a chatbot, had predicative text perfectly finish your sentence, or seen your phone’s map learn your regular commute. If you read the news or use social media, you have seen only increasing references to AI, whether it is generating art or concerns that AI has achieved Skynet levels of sentience.

For websites, numerous AI plugins and add-ons increase functionality, with some already built into many website hosting services. Some of these can immediately recognize and delete spam comments, automatically find connections and link blog articles, improve SEO, or check grammar and readability. 

Useful AI and Machine Learning Plugins/Add-ons

Some AI and machine learning plugins can also help you engage with your customers and website visitors:

  • Chatbots – AI-driven bots that your customers can chat with to get answers to their questions
  • Virtual Assistants – like a chatbot, customers can interact with an AI assistant to help them make purchase decisions, redirect them to relevant pages, or connect them to customer service
  • Content Curation – these AI learn from the content visitors to your site read, watch, and engage with to recommend other content that matches their interests
  • Product Recommendation – these plugins learn from a customer’s purchases, wishlist, page visits, and abandoned carts to provide recommendations for products while shopping on the website and in their emails
  • Website Translators – these AI provide visitors to your site the ability to automatically translate the entire page or any text content into any supported language

All of these can give your users a better and more functional user experience.

Advantages of AI and Web Design

AI and machine learning website plugins increase your site’s functionality. They also can provide your visitors or customers with a more personalized experience. Content curation and product recommendations encourage visitors and customers to stay on your site longer. They find pages that interest them more easily and become more familiar with your content, services, or products. Immediate answers from chatbots or virtual assistants provide users with a fluid and convenient experience.

That personalized experience comes without an extra cost of human hours. Through these AI, users receive support, help, and recommendations without taking an employee’s time. Plugins can cost money to add to your website, but they are often cheaper than dedicating your employees to answering simple questions or providing recommendations. It is also impossible for your employees to look at the history of every single customer or visitor to provide recommendations. It would take hours for a human, when an AI can do it instantly. Instead, these AI allow you to dedicate your team to more urgent or complicated customer service matters.

By providing machine translations, you can make your website more accessible, widen your reach, and increase your audience and community. While English is one of the most widely used languages in the world, most prefer and have greater proficiency reading in their native language. Providing machine translation allows them to use your website more easily and create a stronger personal connection to your brand. 

Disadvantages of AI and Web Design

These AI plugins help reduce human workload while still providing your customers with a more personalized experience. However, while it is making fast paces in tech, AI does not replace a human’s touch, at least for now. Chatbots and email automations are limited to the information they can provide, and usually cannot process more complex tasks like returns or customer requests that involve account sensitive information or making decisions about policies. Some customers and users may become frustrated when they cannot communicate their issue with a human easily. Make sure it is easy for users to switch from the bot and get in touch with a person.

Similarly, recommendation engines and content curators rely on the amount of information they access about products/content and the users. Another limitation is how well their programming can interpret that information to make suggestions. Make sure enough metadata or tags are provided for products or content that the AI can identify recommendations. They will also take time to learn a customer’s or user’s interests and might also overestimate an accidental page visit. This can have users’ receiving recommendations for products or content that they are not interested in. The best AI curators will provide easy, direct recommendations while they learn a customer’s interests to provide more personalized ones.

Automatic translation can potentially frustrate users. They have become faster and more precise in recent years, but still make mistakes. They primarily translate text, not images, and often stumble on idiom or misunderstand a word’s use in a specific context. Machine translation can be useful to quickly generate a mostly understandable translation and put the literal meaning into another language, but proper translation takes the human skill of conceptualizing. Furthermore, AI cannot localize, adapting content from one culture’s language to another to give a translation the proper sense. Advise users your website’s translations are machine generated to temper their expectations. If enough visitors are using that language, then you may want to consider hiring a translator.

Overall, AI can help provide a personalized experience if it works well; however, when it fails, it risks exposing the man, or machine, behind the curtain. This creates a disconnect from the human element at your company, can reduce authenticity, and make your customers feel less connected to your brand.

Getting Started

AI and machine learning can quickly and easily improve your website. Interested or have more questions? Rosewood’s web design team can help you determine if and which will best suit your business’ needs.

Man has pleasant experience on his tablet and phone with an AI and web design
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Rosewood 2.0: We’re Rebranding

New Rosewood Logo

Rosewood is excited to announce that we have rebranded! 

We are calling this, Rosewood 2.0, as it not only includes our logo, but also our brand identity.

What started in 2015 as a solopreneur venture, offering VA (Virtual Admin) Services and WordPress Websites, quickly evolved into a full-service Digital Marketing Agency powered by an incredible team. This new logo represents a more sophisticated brand and upgraded offerings to allow us to serve a wider range of client shapes and sizes all over the world.

As part of this rebranding exercise we’ve taken the time to clarify our Core Values, Mission, and Vision as a company. 

Rosewood’s Core Values:

  • Honesty: The foundation of meaningful relationships between teams, clients, shareholders, etc.
  • Authenticity: Be true to your mission/vision. Amplify the benefits of your product/service truthfully and without gimmicks. 
  • Strategy: Build a clear strategy before you make a move.
  • Accessibility: Ensure equal access; not just concerning accessibility tools and application, but equal access to effective marketing strategies and solutions.
  • Opportunity Leveraging: Change the mindset from “problem-solving” to “opportunity-leveraging”.
  • Partnership & Collaboration: We work with you, becoming an extension of your team. We truly care about your business and mutual success! 

Mission:

To support geographically-bound service businesses and nonprofits by strategically aligning their marketing efforts with their goals.

Vision:

To amplify awareness and success of local businesses/organizations that contribute positively to their communities. 

Our Approach: Authentic Marketing

We believe that authenticity is key. If you have a valuable product/service that improves the overall quality of your community, we want to help you amplify your message and spread the word. 

We’ve Leveled Up All Our Services, Including:

  • Advanced WordPress Websites
  • Advanced Shopify Stores
  • AODA / WCAG Compliance (Website Accessibility)
  • Advanced PPC Ads: Google, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), LinkedIn, Reddit, etc.
  • Branding:
    • Renaming / Rebranding
    • Service Design
    • Brand Guidelines
  • Social Media Management & Content Creation
  • Photography & Videography
  • Content Writing

What’s New at Rosewood?

  • AGCO Licensed Supplier for Catch the Ace Raffles
  • COMING SOON: Customizable Fundraising Platform for Non-Profits

We are constantly evolving and expanding our services to match the needs of our clients. Rosewood has worked with over 250 businesses/organizations worldwide, and this is just the beginning! 

What do you think of our new logo? We’d love your feedback! 

A brick office.
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