Google Web Developer tools – Awesome!
You may have heard or read about Google changing its algorithm to favour websites that work well on mobile devices. This is just one of many changes that Google makes to its algorithm – but this is more high-profile than other recent changes made. Google currently uses over 200 factors to calculate its search results.
The Web Team have been developing ‘responsive‘ templates for use across the University website(s) for a couple of years meaning that those areas of the website with these newer templates are fully mobile compatible. The most recent example being the ‘Study’ section which was relaunched in early March http://www.bradford.ac.uk/study/ and the new Graduation site which went live yesterday: http://www.bradford.ac.uk/graduation/
We have used the Google tools to test these newer sites and got a ‘Awesome! This page is mobile friendly’ rating.
We know which areas of the website aren’t fully mobile compatible and we have a programme of work to roll-out the newly developed templates to these areas of the website (including Faculty sites) with the external home page in the next week or so before finalising smaller details with the Faculties. We prioritised the Study section at the start of this year.
Our older sites are still usable on a mobile device but the user-experience isn’t quite as elegant as with the new templates.
Our user stats show that the use of mobile devices to access our web presence is on the increase, but still hasn’t overtaken desktop.
So are you ready for Mobilegeddon? You don’t want to miss a thing!