A few weeks ago we we launched the first responsive design of STYLIGHT. Because of a strong mobile Web adoption, we have seen the launch of a number of great responsive designs in 2013. So it was about time that we jump on the bandwagon to improve our mobile Web experience.
Quite frankly the STYLIGHT experience on the mobile Web was pretty underwhelming. But it’s not us to decide how people access our website. Unsurprisingly, it’s increasingly on mobile devices and tablets. At STYLIGHT we were seeing around one third of our traffic coming from mobiles and tablets. So we asked ourself: With so many devices in so many sizes, how can we offer a compelling experience on all of them? Basically there are two options on the table.
Either one responsive site to rule them all or device specific experiences for our mobile website. While big e-commerce companies like Amazon, Zalando or H&M seem to be favouring device specific mobile web experiences, we opted for building STYLIGHT responsively from the ground up. Responsive design might not be the singular best solution for all circumstances, but to us the benefits were and still are obvious: Simplicity, SEO, Conversion from status quo and Speed. In the presentation below, which we delivered on Mobile Monday in Munich, we dig deeper into the motivations and the rational behind our responsive design.
This responsive redesign of STYLIGHT really challenged our existing product design and development processes. Our existing process just felt inefficient and outdated. So we decided to change it. Great responsive web designs evolve in collaboration between developers and designers. In a small series of blog posts throughout the next weeks we would like to lay out how we went from an waterfall product design process to a more agile process, in which developers and designers start working together earlier and in which part of the design happens in the browser.
The series of blog posts is split into the following parts:
- Research, Reasons, Team Setup & Overall Process
- Product Design & Development process
- Outcomes and Results of the new, responsive STYLIGHT
To stay up-to-date on this series of posts follow us on @stylight_eng.
