Sometime in the near future, you’ll log onto www.jillcataldo.com and find a new and improved site design. Now, I know that no one likes change..! The redesign process has been tedious, time-consuming, and often bordering on nerve-wracking for me, because I don’t like change either.
So why will I soon be changing things up on the blog? A few reasons…
- To improve navigation on phones and tablets: My blog analytics tell me that each month between 60-70% of my users are visiting my site with smartphones and tablets, not computers. (In fact, 60% of all web traffic now originates from mobile devices.) However, people browsing from phones also currently spend less time on the site than computer users do. A mobile-friendly site will work better, faster and easier for everyone browsing while on the go. This doesn’t mean the browsing experience will be diminished for people who still use computers — the new design will bring a cleaner, more organized and more inviting design for everyone.
- I’m being “coerced” into this: Really. And not exactly gently. Google recently announced that it will be penalizing websites that are not optimized for mobile devices. If you come here regularly, of course, this doesn’t affect you — but it does severely hurt the site’s ability to attract and invite new users. If a site isn’t optimized for phones, people won’t see it featured in their Google results. Google now considers mobile-friendliness extremely important to ranking search results, punishing sites that are designed primarily for browsing with a computer.
- Advertisers are requesting it. My blog is supported by a variety of advertising which keeps it free for you to read — and gives me a job to wake up to each day. As web content transitions to mobile-responsive formats, advertisers are increasingly requiring the sites they advertise on to be optimized for phones. I recently had a pit-in-the stomach moment when a large advertiser notified me that they could not work with my site until I changed to a mobile-friendly design. So again — I’m really being strongly encouraged into making this upgrade. I enjoy the relationships I have with my site’s advertisers, and hopefully you do too. I try to keep the advertising relevant and focused to the topics I write about. When advertisers are happy, it brings more opportunities for my readers too, like many of the fun giveaways I feature here –I think we can agree that we all enjoy those!
I sincerely hope the transition to the new site, once it’s launched, is something you’ll find easy to use — maybe even a little more fun to hang out on too! (I can’t wait to show the new design to you! I’ve been looking at it for so many weeks that it actually throws me a bit when I flip back to this version.)
Transitioning to the new site should be pretty seamless for everyone — if you are currently registered for the blog, you may need to reset your password once the new design is up. And, if you currently receive a daily digest of posts via email, you may need to re-opt-in once the new design is live too. I’m trying to make things as easy as possible, but these two things may need to be reset due to the way data imports from this version of the site to the new. I will let you know once everything’s finally launched.
As incredible as this may seem, this current version of my site’s design has been in place since January 18, 2010 and is only the second design I’ve had here. (How many of you remember the site’s original 2008 design?) A lot’s changed in the past five years! In addition to an explosion in browsing from handheld devices, we’ve gotten much more social. Some of the blog’s new design features will make it even easier for you to share content on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter too.
So, that’s what’s been going on and why things have been a bit quieter than usual. Hang in there — sometime soon you’ll log on and see the new design! What won’t be missing is the content — all of the old posts and articles will still be here, and you just may find that posts and stories even easier to browse and find.
Especially if you browse from your phone.
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