What the heck have we done to Answer Guy Central?
Unless you’ve never visited us before, you’re rubbing your eyes right now, wondering what happened to the design of this web site. What happened to that simple design and the handful of buttons?
Well, we drink our own Kool-Aid, and today we’ve rolled out a business change that doesn’t make me completely happy, but was the right choice. Relax, Jeff . . . relax . . . relax . . .
Maybe Michael Gerber was right when he questioned our use of the black background. Most people who’ve shared their opinion liked it, but we came to realize that it was causing display and visibility issues for some of you—especially if you visited us on a SmartPhone or other mobile device. Our previous design emphasized form over function in this way, and and we decided a few months ago that change was in order.
But business change takes a while. We weren’t going to change things until we understood what the ramifications would be.
Last week, I told you that as a matter of delivering customer service it might be time to do away with Apps for your web site. And for now, the Android and iPhone Apps for Answer Guy Central are gone. So take a look at this:
What you see on the left of this picture is how Answer Guy Central will look if you visit us on a SmartPhone. It’s automatic; there’s no App necessary to make this magic happen. In fact, there’s nothing at all necessary; it just happens: you get a scaled down version of our web site when you visit us using a scaled-down screen. What you see on the right, by the way, was almost as good, but changed how things appeared, and sometimes wouldn’t show up until you first told your SmartPhone to show it.
Another side effect of this change is that we’re now faster. In general I was happy with the speed we had using the old site design, but with Google getting more and more persnickety about the way web sites act, and even having said that slow speeds can impact your appearance in search results, the slight boost is a win.
There are also a few new SEO tricks loaded into the new Answer Guy Central. I’d tell you about them, but then I’d have to kill you.
So with the Internet becoming more and more mobile, but certainly not dying, I give you a redesign of Answer Guy Central that I hope will do more for you and make it easier for you to interact with us. (note: we now use the WordPress RESPONSIVE Theme)
Need help with your next business change? Say Hello!
