Hi

Out of curiosity, how are people presenting web design ideas these days?

As I work with WordPress and templates, I tend to show initial designs live on a dev server.

I guess some people would still present flat ideas (built in Photoshop)?

Cheers

Andy

I've been doing HTML/CSS mockups for years, since way back in 1999 for my first paid web site job, and they were often (mostly) responsive even then!

Live mockups allow a lot of flexibility, from demonstrating responsiveness, to previewing interactions. Even better is being a meeting with a client and making on the fly tweaks so they can see the effect of even the smallest changes - being able to do that has landed me more than one project

I prefer not to present design ideas for the whole site. I show examples of elements but not the whole thing.

The main reason being until you have the content and structure you are just guessing. With some content to play with you can then show how it is best presented to the visitor.

With wordpress I show clients how to search the theme library and ask them to pick one they like.

I advise them to avoid anything from elegant themes, (especially Divi) and any theme that uses a page builder. Mainly because they are slooooowwww and often poorly responsive. Which is why I build my own themes from scratch, super fast, very light and eliminates the need for a whole load of plugins.

4 hours ago, fisicx said:

I advise them to avoid anything from elegant themes, (especially Divi) and any theme that uses a page builder. Mainly because they are slooooowwww and often poorly responsive.

Ha, that's the way I create my sites!
I have a background in design, so this route has worked for me.

As long as elements are optimised and the hosting is good, the sites are pretty quick. Usually under 2 sec load times.
I agree, out of the box, the responsiveness can also be a bit clunky but the theme allows a lot of flexibility.
My worry about allowing clients to choose WordPress themes themselves is that there are so many variables to then consider as some themes can have strange functionality. For example, I once used a theme that depended on page structure as to where elements were positioned on the page.

1 hour ago, AndyDog said:

As long as elements are optimised and the hosting is good, the sites are pretty quick. Usually under 2 sec load times.

Google doesn't think so:

50/100 and 7.8 seconds

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrighton-website-design.co.uk%2F

48/100 and 8.9 seconds

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdignify.eu%2F

I only let clients look at the themes in the wordpress repository. That way you know they aren't going to be hamstrung by a page builder. Once you get the hang of wordpress blocks you can do some really clever things and still switch themes without breaking the page structure.

Now that mobile first is the way to begin any project you no longer need lots of layout elements - a simple vertical scroll is far more effective. For example, putting columns across the page never works well on a phone. Looks great on a desktop but on a phone you just end up with a stack or content - often with the same sized font as the desktop version. And Divi (along with many other themes) use the hamburger - which is a horrible way to present a navigation system.

But I digress. Doing a demo on a dev server is still the best way to show clients options. But with real content - not lorem ipsum.

Edited October 18, 20196 yr by fisicx

17 minutes ago, fisicx said:

Google doesn't think so:

50/100 and 7.8 seconds

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrighton-website-design.co.uk%2F

48/100 and 8.9 seconds

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdignify.eu%2F

I might be wrong here but I've read quite a few opinions saying the Google Page speed tool isn't the best reflection.
I'm told GT Metrix and Pingdom give a better reflection of actual page loading times.
There are quite a lot of well-ranked and authoratitive sites that seems to suffer at the hands of Pagespeed.
WP Engine's results for example:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwpengine.co.uk%2F

They might have a vested interest here but here's WP Rocket's take on it:
https://wp-rocket.me/blog/the-truth-about-google-pagespeed-insights/

 

Cheers
Andy

 

 

Ignore the desktop results (which is how pingdon measures things).

It's the mobile that matters - not so much the actual score, it's the details below. This is how Google sees your site and will take the results into consideration when compared to your competitors.

I've seen how it affected my ranking. I had one site that was ok but not the fastest. I tweaked the theme and made sure the server was set up correctly and the ranking rose on mobile search results - without any other changes.

I use a custom theme and score 93/100. So it is easily possible. The problem with Divi is it needs a whole load of JS and CSS files and these can take an age to load. and it uses bootstrap which it now so out of date it's almost a joke.

Yes there are some big names that have poorly built sites - but they also have a zillion referral links which can outweight other ranking signals (like page speed). You and I aren't in that lucky position so we have to rely on other tools to help.

If you want to use Divi that's fine. I'm just saying there are a lot of far better themes you could work with. Even better: build your own.

I would demo things in portions because you want really early feedback so you can pivot if need be.  If you build everything upfront pivoting is going to be much more costly.
 

For measuring page performance you are best off using a combination of Lighthouse - it comes with chrome dev tools and https://www.webpagetest.org/

You can hook lighthouse upto your CI service so any commits will run the test and you can ensure that features being added are not breaking your site's performance.

Edited October 18, 20196 yr by rbrtsmith