Illustrator Dani Jones has posted a great litlte tutorial with instructions on how to optimize your portfolio website for the iPhone. Her article really got me thinking. As more and more people are surfing the web with their smart phones, it seems innevitable that sooner or later a potential client is going to try viewing my website on a tiny 3-inch screen.
I’m a gadget geek so the prospect excites me and terrifies me at the same time. Art buyers can view my work on their phones–how cool is that? But there’s a problem. My website is several years old and when I tried browsing it on my iPhone the experience was more than a little klunky. In fact, it stunk. I’d be very surprised if a busy art-director-on-the-go would spend much time pinching and panning and opening new windows to try and navigate my site with his/her mobile device. More than likely they would just move on to the next prospect.
Granted not very many of my potential cleints are browsing for talent on their smart phones. But it seems likely to me that a few of them are. I do most of my advertising via email blasts so it seems at least plausible, if not probable, that a busy art buyer somewhere might read my latest email and then click through to my site while riding the subway or grabbing a bagel at the coffee shop. When they do I want to make it as easy as possible for them to get excited about my work. The last thing I want is for my website to get in the way.
I’ve been meaning to completely redesign my website for years but the task is so overwhelming I keep putting it off. Thanks to Dani’s tutorial, creating a simple iPhone version of my website seemed much more manageable. So I spent a few hours this evening banging one out. It’s still a rough draft and needs a little visual kick, but it’s a huuuuuuge improvement over what my old website looks like with an iPhone.
Now I’d like to ask you, my blog readers, for a little help. If you have a smartphone, would you please take a minute to visit www.cedricstudio.com and let me know what you think? If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch you should be automatically redirected to the mobile version of my site (the one with the aqua-colored background). I’m not sure what happens if you have a Blackberry, a Pre, or some other non-iPhone device, but if that’s you please leave a comment below and let me know what happens. I’d be very grateful.
If the redirecting doesn’t work, you can visit the mobile version directly at mobile.cedricstudio.com.
Also, since this is a “first draft” of the mobile site I’d love to hear any comments/suggestions on how I could make it better. Is the solid color background too plain? Does it need something extra? I pretty much borrowed Dani’s general layout and just tweaked it but will eventually do more to make it my own. Any feedback you can give me (positive or negative) would be very much appreciated.