The changing face of website design in the age of the tablet
We are living in an interesting time. Website design is evolving to a point where we are no longer solely designing for desktops. We instead need to accommodate for 3 distinct mediums.
- Desktops
- Mobile devices
- Tablets
The latter, in particular, is changing the face of website design. Rapid change is evident in newspaper and online store sites. One of the most interesting sites I have recently encountered has been particularly geared towards tablet users theglobalmail.org. The layout is very unique. Unlike many of its contemporaries, it has is not designed with desktop in mind first and simply retro-fitted later for mobile and tablets.
The site is designed to meet the functional needs of people with tablets, a brave move that works so well! The unique thing about the design/layout is the brave use of a horizontal scroller in opposition to the traditional vertical scroll. Although this feature is to accommodate for tablet users, it also translates very nicely to desktop.
Now some interesting facts from Adobe which will likely influence businesses and designers. 'Consumers who visit retail websites using tablet devices (“Tablet Visitors”) are more valuable online customers than those who visit websites using smartphones or traditional desktop/laptop computers'. Adobe concluded this from their analysis of 16.2 billion visits to the websites of more than 150 retailers in 2011. The results can be found here. Here is a summary:
- Tablet Visitors spent over 50% more per purchase and were nearly three times more likely to purchase than Smartphone Visitors
- Tablet Visitors spent over 20% more per purchase and were nearly as likely to make a purchase as Traditional Visitors
