Designing for mobile/tablets - worth it?

[MadCat]

Given this thread here, I figured I'd throw a new one up just to not clutter the old one up.

Personally I believe it's a good idea to stay with the times, as it were. A little browsing around on adult sites still makes me shudder because many of them use HTML 4 (if that), and are coded up in early 2000's style. Sure, it will render, but it doesn't do much for mobile, tablets, or even netbooks which have a lower screen resolution that most desktops these days.

Considering desktops, seeing things at 1920x1080 resolutions is not a rare thing these days either, and unfortunately a lot of sites look like total ass when viewed in resolutions like that.

Responsive layouts solve a lot of that, and make sure that a site that looks great on a desktop also looks great on a tablet - and I feel that's important.

After all, porn purchases are generally impulse buys - I don't know a single person who'd say "yes, I'm going to go look for some porn to buy today". How are you going to get someone on a tablet to get all impulsive and buy something if they can't properly browse your site?

My biggest peeve is opening a site on my phone (whether it be mainstream or adult) and not being able to browse it without a lot of zooming and fiddling around - I'll just close it and visit some other site with the same content who does have a mobile friendly layout.

Google considers your site's mobile friendliness as part of it's ranking these days, and not only is that a rather clear sign that it's worth designing for mobile, it also means that it's now a significant enough factor one has to deal with.

I've said this before a few years back, but I'll say it again: it's 2015; use the technology that's available right here, right now, instead of sticking to what we knew worked in 1999.

That'll be my 2 cents

[ecchi]

I agree, but with the caveat that a well designed PC/laptop site should automatically look good on a full size tablet. If it does not then you did not make it responsive enough for the various PC/laptop configurations your surfers may have.

But with 'phones and pocket tablets you need to be more creative. It is already good traffic, and with time will get better. Not designing for smaller devices is throwing traffic away.

However a lot of people use CSS, and that is so non standard between devices that it is near impossible to make a fully compatible CSS site for all 'phones/tablets (or all PC browsers come to that).

That said, sometimes it is impossible even with pure HTML. If you look at my most recent work: http://women-in-bondage.info/cruel-bondage-movies/ you will see that the header is responsive enough for 'phones but the rest of the site is not. This is because I started intending for it to be 'phone ready, but soon realised that as I was using hosted videos I could not control my sponsors code so could not make the video pages responsive. And I cannot think of a quicker way to piss off surfers that to make the video menu responsive, then, when they try to watch a movie, for them to find the film does not work on their device.

Also, I am finding that many of my old sites require total rebuilding to make them 'phone ready, so I am leaving them as is and building new sites that are 'phone ready instead.

In short what I am saying is that I agree with you, but I do not 100% practise what I preach!

[MadCat]

Originally Posted by ecchi

I agree, but with the caveat that a well designed PC/laptop site should automatically look good on a full size tablet. If it does not then you did not make it responsive enough for the various PC/laptop configurations your surfers may have.

True, although these days designing for 1280x1024 should be your "default" - that'll work on most full-sized tablets.

But with 'phones and pocket tablets you need to be more creative. It is already good traffic, and with time will get better. Not designing for smaller devices is throwing traffic away.

However a lot of people use CSS, and that is so non standard between devices that it is near impossible to make a fully compatible CSS site for all 'phones/tablets (or all PC browsers come to that).

Wrong. CSS2 and CSS3 are fully supported (and standard) between all devices. You just need to avoid the browser-specific addons. That's why using a CSS framework is usually a good idea since it also includes all the scaffolding CSS that resets the typography to a sane default on all devices and then builds on top of it.

That said, sometimes it is impossible even with pure HTML. If you look at my most recent work: http://women-in-bondage.info/cruel-bondage-movies/ you will see that the header is responsive enough for 'phones but the rest of the site is not. This is because I started intending for it to be 'phone ready, but soon realised that as I was using hosted videos I could not control my sponsors code so could not make the video pages responsive. And I cannot think of a quicker way to piss off surfers that to make the video menu responsive, then, when they try to watch a movie, for them to find the film does not work on their device.

You could self-host the videos though

Also, I am finding that many of my old sites require total rebuilding to make them 'phone ready, so I am leaving them as is and building new sites that are 'phone ready instead.

In short what I am saying is that I agree with you, but I do not 100% practise what I preach!

Yeah, the problem is with "old" sites that they would require a lot of work to make them mobile friendly; now if it's galleries or other "build and forget" sites, leaving them as-is is usually the sane option. For new sites though... it sure is worth delving into the mobile world.

On my mainstream sites nearly 40% of my traffic originates off some sort of mobile device, and I figure for adult it would be the same, considering these days it seems people are glued to their mobile devices >.>

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by MadCat

Wrong. CSS2 and CSS3 are fully supported (and standard) between all devices.

I'm assuming you are a CSS coder. If so you really need to do a Google search on this. There are loads of sites who will list what can be used on which tablet/browser. If you want to only use those commands that are "global" you have a really small sub-set to play with.

Originally Posted by MadCat

You could self-host the videos though

Yeah, my hosting bill is high enough as it is without giving away terabytes of free videos!

Originally Posted by MadCat

On my mainstream sites nearly 40% of my traffic originates off some sort of mobile device, and I figure for adult it would be the same

Someone else (I forget who) pointed out a while back that "adult" is a lot different from mainstream. Whereas it is perfectly possible to get information etc on a 'phone screen, a screen only two inches wide will not really give you a big enough view of a video to jerk off. Not that there won't be some (probably loads) of adult traffic from this source, but do not expect it to be as good as mainstream.

[MadCat]

Originally Posted by ecchi

I'm assuming you are a CSS coder. If so you really need to do a Google search on this. There are loads of sites who will list what can be used on which tablet/browser. If you want to only use those commands that are "global" you have a really small sub-set to play with.

True, although you can do the CSS so it has the same effect on pretty much all browsers, e.g.

box-shadow: ....
-moz-box-shadow: ....
-webkit-box-shadow: ...

It's a pain in the ass, but you can actually get things to look the same across different browsers. The visitor does need a recent browser, though...

Yeah, my hosting bill is high enough as it is without giving away terabytes of free videos!

Depends on encoding I guess

Someone else (I forget who) pointed out a while back that "adult" is a lot different from mainstream. Whereas it is perfectly possible to get information etc on a 'phone screen, a screen only two inches wide will not really give you a big enough view of a video to jerk off. Not that there won't be some (probably loads) of adult traffic from this source, but do not expect it to be as good as mainstream.

But a screen 2 inches wide would be the lowest of the low-class smartphones. That isn't a target audience I'd spend a lot of time on, I'd be more interested in getting things to work for phablets/tablets - they're bigger, and do offer enough of a screen to get your fap/shlick on

[Useless]

Madcat - follow your intuition. Ignore ecchi. You'll better server your visitors and Google may look upon you more favorably.

[ecchi]

Originally Posted by MadCat

The visitor does need a recent browser, though

But many of them don't have one. And every surfer who cannot read your site is a $ you are throwing away!

Originally Posted by MadCat

But a screen 2 inches wide would be the lowest of the low-class smartphones. That isn't a target audience I'd spend a lot of time on

No, but you at least want your site readable to them. Again, throwing away surfers is throwing away $$$$s. As I said to someone else a while back - if you got to much money, then rather than throw it away by sloppy site design, send what you don't want to me!

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

Ignore ecchi. You'll better server your visitors and Google may look upon you more favorably.

Grow up. I gave you the opportunity on another board to explain why you have a problem with me, but you did not have the balls to reply. That thread is still open if you ever grow a pair and decide to reply to it rather than continue this childish trolling.