As the director of Digital Strategies at Issues Ink, publisher of Spud Smart, I am delighted to share the exciting news that spudsmart.com will soon be sporting a brand new look. Our web designer Nicholoas Buhr and the rest of the Spud Smart team have been working hard to craft a website that not only delivers compelling content and is user-friendly and appealing to the eye, but is responsive for easy viewing on smaller screens such as your smartphone
or tablet.
As a digital marketing professional, I am often asked about website design best practices. At the top of my list is ensuring a mobile site is included, preferably by creating a responsive website.
A responsive website will scale to fit and properly present content tailored to the device that is being used, whether it be a desktop computer, laptop, tablet or mobile phone. No matter what devices you’re using to access spudsmart.com, you can enjoy its innovative new design.
But why is this important? There are a few reasons.
User experience is crucial, and one of our main goals at Spud Smart is to ensure our potato content is delivered in real time. A responsive website will allow content to be accessible on the go, ensuring 100 per cent convenience for our viewers.
Another reason why responsive websites are so important is because the major Internet search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing provide preferences for responsive and mobile websites on the search results pages for mobile and tablet devices.
The search engine providers do this, because they realize the importance of providing the best possible user experience when people are searching for information online. A proper mobile website helps provide this experience, and it’s definitely something to consider if you’re in the process of planning or updating your own website.
Since Spud Smart contains leading content about and for the Canadian potato industry, we are making it easier for spudsmart.com to be found in online searches, both nationally and globally. With almost half of Internet usage occurring on mobile devices across North America, the movement into responsive design is imperative.
Other improvements are being made to enhance the user experience on spudsmart.com. In addition to providing breaking news and our trademark issues-focused stories on the site when the information is ready to be posted online, navigating our new site will be intuitive and easy, with the content organized into issues-related topics that include Agronomy, Storage, Business, Technology, Sustainability, News and Viewpoints, along with access to the current issue of Spud Smart magazine.
We’re very excited about the launch of the brand new spudsmart.com. With its new features and responsive capacity, our revamped website promises to deliver added convenience and an enhanced user experience for our viewers. In this digital age, that’s truly a good thing.
