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Why you are failing at responsive web design

Technology is moving at the speed of light and demanding us to attempt to keep up with it. There's more than meets the eye when attempting to keep up with client demand than just making a client’s site mobile friendly. Yes, what you know is important but what you don’t know or adequately applying what you know is what will keep you from reaching your desired outcome. As a developer if your work is not producing the results you want here are few reasons why you are failing at responsive web design.

Elements of Responsive web design

Regarding responsive web design it's all about problem solving. We see a problem, analyze it, break it down then create a solution that makes life easier. While this is a sometimes grueling task it's worth all the hard work in the end. A basic rule to keep in mind is that when users visit a site all the pieces of the web puzzle and technological aspects need to flawlessly fit in order for user interaction to occur.

Screen size, platform and orientation are pieces of the puzzle that make up qualitative design and development. Other aspects include flexible grids, images and knowledgeable use of CSS queries. Whether the user switches from a desktop, laptop or iPad, proper response development allows the website to automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities.

In order to keep up with the exponential speed of technology you must address consumer convenience and demand. Consider these statistics:

Maximizing the browser experience

If your users have a memorable experience when they visit the website, they'll come back. The site’s appearance and visual structure should change without content or function loss for the users of any specific device or screen size. Being aware of the most popular screen sizes and resolutions when designing a site will optimize user interaction.

Think Responsive

There are hundreds of layouts you could use to make the website look good. However, some layouts are more developmentally ideal for responsive design than others. Consider using designs that convert better to assorted new sizes.

Site element compression

Compression of page resources allow for easier transmission across networks. Reducing the number of bytes sent per page or element, creates easier content browsing formation. This also allows greater accessibility for devices with varying or low-bandwidth.

Flexibility

Structural elements and texts in the layout column were once the only flexible option available in early web development. Sometimes simplicity works best. Application of adaptive sizing and width resizing provides a flexible option for images. Flexible layouts allow images for automatic adjustment without breaking up the layout pattern. This is a perfect solution for devices that switch from portrait orientation to landscape instantaneously or when the user switches from a large computer screen to an iPad.

Another option although not as simple as the previous choice, is to use variable break points. However, when storing multiple image sizes in your data to accommodate for screen resolution you may encounter challenges regarding bandwidth usage.

There are many aspects to the web design puzzle and as a developer failing is not a viable option. Knowledgeable application creates solutions and optimizes responsive web design.

Contact us today to find out more information about our products and services.

It is shocking to think that 10 years ago people didn't even know what a mobile app was. Now apps are beginning to replace the internet and your business isn't a business unless it has a companion app. When it comes to mobile technology we have come a long way in a relatively short amount of time which has led to some major benefits, but maybe also made us oblivious to a few of the draw backs.

With mobile apps - especially business apps - in high demand mobile app development is a quickly growing field and, unfortunately, its fast growth is creating more than a few snake oil salesmen. When looking for the best and most reliable applications for your business you want to know that you can rely on the app itself and the company that is developing it. Here are 4 dirty little secrets about mobile apps that the other guys don't want you to know.

It Doesn't Mean Immediate Visibility

Some companies believe that they will get a million downloads and catapult into super stardom within hours of their app hitting the market, but that is simply not the case. There are hundreds of thousands of apps on each app store now so it is surprisingly easy for your app to get lost in the mix. Even when it does land in front of people they need to have a reason to download your app whether it is a new idea all together or a better version of something else that is out there. Unless you are extremely lucky every app launch comes with a certain amount of mandatory marketing.

An App Needs Lifetime Support

A lot of app developers are comfortable creating a basic app for you then kicking you out the door with no back-end support. Just like any other software, apps need to be maintained and updated as technology and information continue to evolve. If you are not getting lifetime support for your app you may find yourself having to pay someone to create a whole new app for you every year which is not cost-effective and may confuse users.

There is no Proven Method...Yet

Developers go back and forth more than a ping-pong game in congress when it comes to development best practices. Some developers swear by the software developer's kit or SDK of their respective platform because of its stability while others believe that HTML5 is the best way to go because of the versatility and options it allows. The fact of the matter is that it really all depends on what your developer thinks is the best way to go about your project specifically and it will most likely always be that way unless a singular SDK emerges that puts traditional and HTML5 development to shame.

It's All About the User Interface

You could have the most incredible, technical, best-at-its-job app there is on the market, but if it isn't pretty it won't sell. People have come to expect their apps to be visually appealing and easy to navigate whether it is a game or a mobile business application and if your app doesn't meet their criteria it is going to be deleted as fast as it is downloaded. Make sure that your developer spends a little extra time on the user interface, you and your end users will appreciate it.

There are many things that inexperienced app developers don't want you to know. They bank on the fact that you don't know much about the development process and the sneaky tricks that some of them use to get your business. If you are looking for a development team who won't trick you, knows about what makes an app good-looking and marketable, and most importantly offers lifetime support for their services contact us today. 

Quora.com is a venue where people can submit questions on topics, and then experts on those topics, often people working in that industry, can submit answers. What makes Quora so brilliant is that you'll often find answers from some of the top names in an industry. It's a treasure trove of accurate information directly from the source.

For this article, we found five Killer quora answers on agile programming that users had submitted to Quora:

1. What are the differences between SCRUM, XP and Agile in general?

Jeff Sutherland, inventor and co-creator of scrum, explained that "the best Scrum teams implement XP engineering practices inside the Scrum. The best XP teams wrap Scrum around XP as it allows them to scale and take advantage of the high performance gains possible with Scrum."

In addition to this insight, Sutherland provides a detailed history on the development of agile programming and how scrum and XP fell into place in the context of that history. He notes that he started his first Scrum project in 1993 at Easel corporation, and he based their work on a book by Takeuchi and Nonaka called "The New New Product Development Game," published in 1986 by the Harvard Business Review. You can see his full answer, with all the fascinating historical details, here.

2. How many user stories are optimal for an Agile software project?

Cliff Gilley, an Agile practitioner for 15 years, explained that there is no magic number. User stories should reflect user goals, features, and functionality. He makes an important point: "however many of those [features, functionality, user goals] you need to document and execute is the number of stories that you're going to need." His personal preference, however, is no less than two: the story the team is currently working on and the next story that is in need of work, "ready to go as soon as the team finishes the current story," as he explains in his answer, which you can read in full here.

3. Can you recommend books which walk through a programming problem in an agile context?

Warren Wise gave the following insightful answer:

Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices by Robert C. Martin? It's an old book (2002), but it explains agile principles very well and provides a good working example of agile development practices (e.g., test driven development, refactoring). It also illuminates the SOLID principles of object-oriented development. Code examples are in Java (mind you, it's the version that was in use at the time).

As old as this book is, I recommend it because the author's fundamental understanding of agility is phenomenal. Also, when it comes to object orientation, I've found that may of the earlier books are actually the most enlightening.

4. Why do people choose Scrum over extreme programming when both are frameworks of Agile?

Gerry Claps, VP at Blossom.io, a Scrum master and product owner, wrote this in reply:

Comfort. Why? Scrum offers more 'standard' management artifacts and practices. For example:

• Meetings --> Daily standup, Sprint Review, Retrospective
• Documentation --> Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog
• Metrics --> Velocity, Burndown chart

Extreme Programming (XP) is focused around engineering practices, which work great in almost any software development context, but are less useful in managing the work itself.

5. How shall I adapt Scrum to be used in a multiple project/program environment?

Murray Robinson, Agile practitioner and evangelist, wrote the following answer:

The scrum view is that you work with your senior product owners and scrum masters to break your program of work up into independent chunks of functionality that deliver customer value and that can be progressively delivered by a cross functional scrum team of 4 to 8 people within 2 to 4 months (about $200k of work on average). You put these epics in a program back log, estimate them at a high level and assign them to scrum teams in order of priority. As the teams work through the back log you calculate program velocity and run a program burn up or burn down chart.

If you have a lot of work you have many scrum teams operating independently and delivering frequently so you get almost continuous delivery of functionality and business value into production. If the teams need to coordinate their work they do so through a daily scrum of scrums. In this approach the project manager steps up to the program manager role and has multiple scrum masters reporting to them. The big assumption underlying this model is that you can break the work up into many small independent chunks that can be delivered in a few months. This can be difficult to do in practice. The business may not be able to elaborate or prioritize epics or get funding until they can have completed an overall product, process and UI design; and the technical teams may not be able to estimate, prioritize or elaborate the epics until they have designed the system architecture they have in common.

If you have been struggling to get your projects completed on time, efficiently and with fewer headaches, you will want to look seriously at the Scrum Agile development process.

SearchSoftwareQuality, an online tech publication, describes scrum as a project management concept for software development. The concept of scrum is that it is designed for use with multiple small teams working tightly together in almost a rigid format but all moving in same direction.

For software application development, Agile software development (ASD) is a technique on the creative side of the process that can foresee the need for flexibility allowing the finished product to be accomplished more quickly.

Put them together and you have the best of both applications to get a project off the ground quickly and efficiently: Scrum in Agile Development.

Break it Down

Scrum involves not just the adoption of a new business process or a framework for managing software development. It is a new way of transforming the way work has traditionally been managed before.

Steve Denning writes in Forbes that "Scrum is a solution to the problem of combining disciplined execution of high-level intellectual work with continuous innovation."

The practices of Scrum for software developers using terms such as “sprints”, “burn down charts”, “product owner”, “scrum-masters” basically comprise specific core practices that organize a team to breakdown exactly how a project will lay out and get completed in a much shorter and more organized amount of time. The teams allow a project to proceed in what are called "short cycles:"

• The management doesn’t interrupt the team.
• Define work goals through customer stories:
• The team calculates how much time work will take:
• The team decides how much work it can do in an iteration:
• The team reports to the client.
• The team measures its own performance:
• Define work goals before each cycle starts:
• Systematically remove impediments:
• The team decides how to do the work in the iteration:

In an article written by Michael James about Scrum, James says that when the practices are organized in this way, beyond the realm of software development, they can be dynamic and link break from the traditional practices of ranked bureaucracy, where individuals reports to bosses to produce outputs.

Teams using the practices have been enormously productive. These were not just improvements that just slightly better than the norm. The most product teams usually obtain productivity gains of up to 400 percent, changes that are industry-changing improvements.

Some mixed implementation results of Scrum

Sometimes the results are mixed. The term assigned to this is “Scrum-butt.” These are examples of a failure to implement the full practices of Scrum. It's important to be sure to implement all the practices for it to work. Doing the work in short cycles but interrupting the team during the cycle, the potential gains in productivity don’t occur.

In part these problems of implementation have flowed from the way Scrum is sometimes viewed and introduced.

When you try to insert Scrum as a project management structure in a setting of a conventional management of ranked bureaucracy, there are unavoidable conflicts. Usually the existing culture will be triumphant.

This experience sometimes leads people to believe that Scrum is just another management fad that didn’t work.

What the experience really shows is the opposite: that ranked bureaucracy is a work culture that no longer fits the marketplace of today. Scrum works. It’s the conventional management culture that doesn’t work.

As a result, Scrum projects achieve higher customer satisfaction rates.

If you are ready to put Scrum and Agile technology and methods together, be sure to contact us and we can get you to a more efficient level of project management. 

Can you identify any of the tell-tale signs your company needs a mobile app in order to stay competitive this year? Perhaps you've noticed a downturn in business this year, or feel like your brand is just blending in lately with all your competitors. You're also probably seeing a lot of your competitors with a strong mobile presence and feel like you're falling behind.

Because mobile usage is soaring with consumers over desktops, a mobile app benefits you in more ways than you think.

Even if you're not sure how to begin, an expert designer can help you encapsulate everything about your company into an app everyone will love. We can do this for you here at Contensive.

First, though, take a thorough look at what's happening in your company over the last year. You'll see some things perhaps under the radar that an app can help repair for improved business and consumer trust.

Fixing Brand Recognition

It's not an easy business world out there with the likely dozens (it not hundreds) of competitors in the same industry you're in. If you're seeing signs that consumers can't tell you apart from someone else, you likely have a brand recognition problem.

An app works like both a cyber billboard and as a place where consumers assimilate your brand. You not only promote what products or services you provide in an app, you can design it with branding colors and use content that stands for your company ideals.

Don't underestimate the usefulness of color and unique app design since daily use by consumers makes your brand instantly recognizable everywhere they go.

Bringing More Value to Your Company

Have you had anyone tell you recently that they didn't buy from you because they didn't think they really needed your products? This shows an immediate lack of value in why you're in business in the first place. It's the last thing you want to hear, especially when already facing a downgrade in business recently.

A smartly designed app can provide a useful function or exclusive information that connects directly with your products or services. Whatever that function is, it should help consumers solve a problem while being simple to use.

Don't be afraid to include loyalty programs or other special features into your company app. This consolidates every useful function of your company into one digital location.

Being Visible at All Times

Having an app means your company has visibility at all times, which some of your customers have possibly complained about. When customers want a certain product or want to contact you at odd times of the night (or on holidays), it's not easy to say you're closed at those times. While your website is available at all times, an app provides more interaction for those on the go during every hour of the day.

Improving Customer Communication

One complaint you've maybe received in the last year is that your customers can't communicate with you easily without using roundabout email addresses. Or, they complain that because they're on the go so much, they can't contact you unless back home on their desktops.

With an app, you open a new channel of communication in real-time for mobile users. Live messaging features on your app can connect you with a customer immediately to take care of an issue, make a sale, or take a reservation.

Real-Time Offers

One thing you've perhaps noticed is that your competitors don't use real-time local marketing to capture local customers in the moment. On your app, you can send instant notifications about a sale taking place and make it specific to a particular location so you capture prospective consumers in the immediate area.

These type of unexpected surprises are what customers appreciate to liven up marketing and take on deals beyond the usual. Overall, your app connects to people on a more personal level, which is what most consumers look for today in all companies as a form of transparency.

Contact us here at Contensive and we'll design an app for your company that fits your brand so you stay on every consumer's mind.

Remember when the majority of businesses did not have websites? Or, when businesses built websites simply to have a web presence, but with little to no functionality to enable e-commerce and online lead generation? Now, most businesses have websites that are fully functional and enable consumers to buy their products without ever having to enter their brick and mortar locations.

Until a few years ago, a fully functional site that users could access from desktops and laptops put your business in a great position to capture the consumer's shift to online shopping. However, with the rise of the iPhone, iPads, Android devices and other mobile methods of accessing the web, it's time to re-assess your website to make sure it is well-positioned to capture this shift to mobile web surfing. And, while your existing site is capable of rendering on mobile devices (except for Flash sites on Apple devices), it will appear exactly as it does on desktops. Due to the smaller size of the screens, this does not always represent the best user experience.

So, how do you make sure that you present the most user-friendly version of your site to visitors regardless of how they attempt to access it? Upgrade your site to utilize responsive web design! Responsive web design is a design approach that focuses on providing the best viewing and engagement experience across many different types of devices. The sitesare built to be flexible and adjust site presentation based on the device where it will be served. This happens programmatically and does not require any actions from the user.

While this design approach has been around for several years, it has risen in prominence due to a significant changes in mobile behavior. During the beginning of 2014, mobile time spent on the Internet surpassed desktop usage. Users chose mobile access over to perform a variety of activities, including:

• Accessing content
• Accessing the Internet
• Checking email
• Playing games
• Making purchases

Another significant change that has driven greater mobile adoption? The rise of social media. Most social sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are accessed primarily via mobile devices. Some platforms, such as Instagram, were built only for mobile access. Even LinkedIn, the professional social media network, was approaching a mobile majority (47% of all visits), by the end of 2014. This is important because social media is all about sharing - links, photos, videos. Are you losing opportunities to engage with new audiences because your site does not render effectively for traffic driven to it from these platforms?

And, the most significant change of all? Mobile search volume officially surpassed desktop search volume during the early part of this year. That means that the people who are actively searching for sites to meet their needs - from shopping to research - are turning first to their mobile devices. All of these changes confirm what the industry has been predicting for the last few years - Internet users are officially mobile first. Google has taken the lead in adjusting to this behavioral change with the rollout of Mobilegeddon, an update to its algorithm that penalizes sites that are not mobile-friendly. Overnight, businesses that ranked well in desktop search lost rankings on mobile devices because their sites were not mobile-friendly.

Rather than looking at the Google updates as the end of the changes to support a mobile first approach, consider it the beginning of a shift in priority for search engines, social media and other technologies engaged in helping users access. Bing has signaled that it will make a similar mobile search update in the coming months.

If your site is not already built on a responsive design platform, it will become increasingly difficult to drive revenue from the web. Before you lose significant footing in the search results, consult a firm with experience crafting mobile first responsive web designs.

Sometimes watching the news for exciting new mobile apps is as fun as watching a good TV show. You laugh, you cry, and there are all sorts of twists and turns along the way (especially when you begin to follow the ups and downs of start-up companies). Silicon Valley drama aside, the following five new apps are deserving of their 15 minutes of fame (at least):

1. Be My Eyes

Hans Hilberg of Denmark wanted to create an app that would help blind people see. If that sounds a bit ambitious, it's actually simpler than you think. Hilberg designed the app to smoothly facilitate a live video interaction between a blind person's iPhone and a sighted person's iPhone.

A blind person simply activates the app, and the app's server connects with a volunteer. This comes in handy for all sorts of situations where a pair of eyes goes a long way.

This report tells the story of a blind woman named Roseanne as an example. Roseanne was shopping, and she needed to know about the products on the shelf. She activated the app, and within seconds a sighted person appeared in a live video feed. The randomly picked volunteer, named Katie, looked at the shelf for Roseanne and kindly gave her the information she needed to complete her shopping trip.

Although Katie will likely never speak with Roseanne again, she became a crucial part of Roseanne's life in that moment, and she did something tangible to make another person's day easier.

And with 219,000 volunteers signed up to "be my eyes" for the blind, the app has no shortage of Good Samaritan helpers.

2. PhotoMath

An app that solves math problems by simply pointing your phone's camera at the math problem on paper?

Yes, that is exactly what PhotoMath does. To be clear, it is meant for educational purposes. It doesn't just spit quick answers out at you so that you can try to cheat on a test. It analyzes your problem, and then methodically takes you step-by-step through the solution so that you can learn how to do it.

3. Hopper

Have you ever heard someone say that if you wait until a certain time of day or day of the week to buy plane tickets, they will be cheaper? (Or perhaps a certain day of the month or month of the year?) Hoppertakes all of the guesstimations of that inexact science and turns it into an exact science. It monitors ticket prices from all airlines and analyzes fluctuation patterns of prices and tells you exactly when to "fly and buy" -- down to the exact month, day, and time -- to ensure you get the best deal possible.

4. Hop

Time Magazine's quote on this app probably sums it up the best: "If electronic mail had been invented in 2014, it would probably look a lot like this."

Hop is billed as the "first ever app to turn your existing email into fast, multimedia mobile messaging, focused on the people and groups that matter most to you," according to its site, with these features:

• You connect with your existing email account and Hop converts old and new email messages into a natural flowing chat conversations
• It allows "real-time messaging, document and photo sharing, voice and video calls, and more, eliminating the need to use multiple apps to stay in touch."
• The best part, perhaps, is that it's something you can use immediately to communicate with anyone. You don't have to wait for your friends to download Hop too (which is perhaps the most annoying aspect of trying to transition into a new communication app or social media platform).

5. Ditty

And if you need a laugh, this app that Wired Magazine called "dope" turns your text messages into auto-tuned songs and sends them to your friends. Check out Ditty here.

Let Us Help You With Your Next Mobile App Project

If you are looking for a mobile app creation company that is highly creative and responsive -- even to the smallest nuance of your product development and marketing plan -- contact us to find out what we can build for you.