Try the new mobile friendly MoneySavingExpert.com
We’re in the midst of a huge exercise to make the main site more mobile friendly guide by guide (this blog hasn’t been made more mobile friendly yet, so don’t judge the project on this). In fact, what we’re actually doing is making the site responsive. In other words, the page will scale and change depending on how big your screen is.
So while the content will always be the same (we decided not to cut it down for mobile – if it’s important enough to say, we should say it regardless of the format), it will look different on a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop monitor.
This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned it. I wrote last December that we were starting the project in my Making MSE work better on mobiles blog post and I wanted to update you today on where we are.
It’s actually been a much bigger challenge than we first thought. To make it work, we’ve had to effectively redo each guide for desktops too. We’ve now got a great team working full time just on this though so you should start to notice a difference quickly.
Here’s one we prepared earlier…
Take a look at our 35 ways to boost your credit rating guide on your desktop and on a mobile to see the type of thing we’re doing (note the change to 35 tips isn’t part of this, that was a deliberate style change just for this guide – and not part of the ‘mobilisation’).
I hope it renders well for you and is much easier to read now it fits well on the page. However, it’s not fully finished. In the next couple of weeks we’ll be adding an ‘In This Guide’ hamburger menu icon to all the mobile-optimised guides. You will then be able to click on this to see (and easily navigate to) all the chapter headings and sub-headings of a guide.
PS. The forum is in the midst of a redesign too. Logged-in users will be able to try the new version and many have been using it for months.
What’s the rollout plan?
There are already a good number of articles and guides on the site that have been updated in this format and over the next couple of months, a big chunk of the rest of the content will also be done.
Once that’s done, it’s time to work on the taxonomy of the site – in other words, the navigation structure of the sections – and then once that’s done, we can redesign the home pages and section pages to be more responsive too. After that, we’ll tackle some of the big site tools.
Do let me know what you think of the mobile friendly articles, are they doing it for you?
