"Ok, grab a clean sheet of paper and let's write down everything we want in our new demo website."
"What's paper?"
That's not the exactly the way the meeting started, but you get the point. Technology is changing so fast, some days it is difficult to keep track of what is available and what is not. Thrive IM is in the beginning of designing the next generation YMCA website. A group of us were gathered around the conference room trying to beat John to the pizza.
On the wall we were staring at the existing demo site on the 60" monitor. The problem we were discussing was navigation and sub-navigation. From a user's perspective, how should the navigation flow? What is the most logical progression that would let the site visitor find the information they needed in the most efficient manor? Horizontal navigation or vertical? Fanned sub-nav or accordion?
"I think we are looking at this from the wrong perspective. We already know that traffic to YMCA websites is mirroring traffic to other sites. More than 50% of existing website traffic to YMCA websites now comes from smartphones and tablets. The question we should be asking is how can consumers find the content they seek on a smartphone?"
And suddenly the answer was there. Search. Voice search. You reach your local YMCA site and have a choice. Start reading menu options and clicking on the navigation icon you "think" will reveal the answer, or...
Tap the microphone icon and ask the web site "When does summer camp start?" And almost instantly your smartphone takes you to the information you want on your local YMCA website . Almost Watson-like, it reports "there is a 93% chance that the answer you seek is Friday, June 13th. Would you like to register now?"
Sometimes we forget that a smartphone is still a phone.
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