kmalikis

Hi Warriors,

All you technically inclined people... can anyone reverse engineer this mobile site and tell me how and what kind of software, programming language is used to create such a beautiful mobile site. I think i see CSS style sheets in the source code...but cannot decipher what this means.

How much time would it take to develop such a mobile site?

I like everything about it... the quality of the graphics, the slider, the clean crisp navigation menu and the amount of information it offers.

on a mobile phone check : The Keg Steakhouse & Bar | Home Page ( for god's sake...don't start calling every freaking restaurant to sell them SMS services )

Kam

whland

Wow. That is a nicely designed mobile site.

Chad

WebMasterBabble.com Webmaster Forum

BigMak

What are their hours? They're not listed, nor is there a
tap-to-call button so I can ask them.

If I was a mobile user looking for a steakhouse, I'd probably
move on to the next one.

Just shows that fancy doesn't always mean good!

-Charlie

Dan Grossman

Yeah they are. This is a chain. There are many locations, in 7 provinces of Canada and 4 states of the US. You click on Locations to find the one you're interested in, then it shows you the hours, phone number, etc. of that location.

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johny53

Beautiful design for sure... going to bookmark for future reference

WillR

I would have it a guess that with the images and flashy menus it will be slow loader on slow mobile connections. I agree that fancy isn't always the best for mobile sites and I keep seeing people make this same mistake over and over.

Mobile website are NOT about massaging the ego of the business owner or you, the web designer. It has nothing to do with that and it isn't the place to showcase your design skills. Mobile websites are about the person on their mobile device trying to access information as quickly and easily as possible.

That site, although pretty, could be designed a lot better if they actually had mobile users in mind when designing it.

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Dan Grossman

Bull. I don't think you even looked at their mobile site.

It's optimized for a portrait screen, sends smaller compressed images, and is easy to use with a finger. No scrolling or zooming is needed to see the available content or use the menu comfortably. It's optimized for fast rendering on mobile with lower resolution images than the desktop version and async loading of ancillary scripts. On a mobile connection, the DOMContentLoaded event fires in just 700ms and the full load takes less than 2 seconds. The total download including all the (mobile optimized) slider images is only 211KB.

This is a well designed mobile site.

Improvely: Built to track, test and optimize your marketing.

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kwamster

Nice crisp images, navigation menu and nice slider function - Great looking quality site.

My only criticism, however, is that he images are a little too large for my display (I checked it out on my iphone), but other than that, I'd have to agree with you that it is one of the better looking mobile sites that I've come across.

cdubay

Quote:
Originally Posted by WillR
I would have it a guess that with the images and flashy menus it will be slow loader on slow mobile connections. I agree that fancy isn't always the best for mobile sites and I keep seeing people make this same mistake over and over.

Bull. I don't think you even looked at their mobile site.

It's optimized for a portrait screen, sends smaller compressed images, and is easy to use with a finger. No scrolling or zooming is needed to see the available content or use the menu comfortably. It's optimized for fast rendering on mobile with lower resolution images than the desktop version and async loading of ancillary scripts. On a mobile connection, the DOMContentLoaded event fires in just 700ms and the full load takes less than 2 seconds. The total download including all the (mobile optimized) slider images is only 211KB.

I agree with Bill, Fancy is not always better. Firstly on my Iphone when the menu was brought up, it had to stretched to be readable. that alone knocks it out of "best site"..

The sliders are nice, but the GPS locator has no response message when it cannot locate a restaurant near your location.

For a chain restaurant its not bad, but simple is sometimes better. Take a look at this simple design from another chain. Outback Steakhouse - Restaurant Gift Cards - Locations - Menu
Everything is vertical, and it displays more with less.

Happy marketing

WillR

Why would I even bother saying I looked at the site if I didn't?

ANYWAY...

1. Using a big single background image for the background is not a great idea and won't look the same across all devices, as already proven by another user above. Screens with different sizes will show that image differently. If you are going to use background images you are best to use smaller patterns or textures that repeat themselves. That big single image also means a lot of unnecessary download size added to the page.

2. Only 211KB? Are you joking? You do realize mobile websites are designed to be fast for the end user otherwise they have no advantage over a regular website. The official W3C recommendation is to keep pages sizes under 20KB. Now I know that's near impossible but you should at least be getting your page sizes down around 50KB. That homepage could display the exact same information to the user and be less than a quarter of the size it currently is meaning it would display 4 times faster for the mobile user and means less cost to those mobile users who are on data plans. Which site do you think the mobile user would prefer? A pretty design that takes forever to load or a simple design that jumps right up on their screen? I think we both know the answer. Once again, this is not about what YOU prefer or what looks nice, it's about what works easiest for the end user who is on the move and trying to access your information. You can still have nice clean and professional looking sites without having them sized anywhere near 200KB.

3. I don't like the way it has a navigation button a user must click on before they can access the menu items. Once again it has not been designed with mobile users in mind. Your menu should be visible the moment a person lands on the site so they can click the option they need right away. Adding in any additional steps like this just slows things down for the end user. Why wouldn't the menu just display right away? The only reason I can possibly think of is to try and make it 'prettier'?

You are welcome to design your mobile sites however you like. If you would prefer to concentrate on their prettiness rather than their usefulness then that's your decision. But don't try and debate something that is as logical as my argument is. I know how to design mobile sites and have been doing them for quite some time now. I also know WHY we design mobile sites and that may be something you need to remind yourself of.

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svaningen

Well for a corporation like the Keg, im sure they spared no expense for something like this

John Ayling

Its actually very fast, as it is using jQuery Mobile page pre-fetching technology (out of the box), which you don't get in standard desktop designed web pages. This also means that you can download images in the background after the page has fully loaded, etc..

There does not need to be a trade-off between a quality looking site and a functional site - if you use jQuery Mobile properly.

I don't like the navigation though as it means the user is always 2 taps away from a location rather than just 1 - maybe have some main navigation showing below pages, or perhaps a persistent footer.

There also should be a 'back' button on the header so the user doesn't get disoriented and lost as they travel through different page pathways.

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kmalikis

Hi everyone.

Good points made on opposing sides of the conversation from Dan Grossman, Will R, Cdubay and John Ayling.

I thank John Ayling and Dan Grossman for providing insight into my original questions that i posted. ( in regards to the technology/software/tools that may have been used)

Will R...always appreciate his insight and knowledge on the mobile side of things.. (i have purchased his products and i will say...his stuff is in the MINORITY of WSO's that i actually see quantifiable value in).

In his last post...he seemed a little grumpy though. Yes the background image on the mobile site could be scaled down, I still think it's one of the best i've seen.

I'll trade one extra tap on the screen for a clean, crisp, fast loading mobile site that offers all the info i would possibly want on a mobile phone.

One last thing about Will R... i really appreciate how active he is on the mobile forum, answering questions and offering his insight ( even if he is a bit grumpy sometimes)


Kamran

Jay Moreno

the feedback form offers a horrible mobile user experience... i don't see mobile users wanting to sit there and jump through hoops to fill in all that information... just my 2cents

MagicAce

That mobile site won't even load on my samsung galaxy...it's just show one of the images and then all dissapears and I just see white on all the screen.

wagsgraphx

If I had seen this post before leaving for lunch I could have gone there instead of Denny's. I like the imagery, but I can not get down through all the levels of the tabs. Once I get to the menu tab, I get a message that I have to close a tab before opening another one. I don't understand how to do that. On the directions tab I had to enter my location manually.
All in all, I like the way it looks.

Jose Princely

Cool! Nice mobile Website designs. But considering ecommerce sites, will the payment page be good and trust worthy for buyers.

piney94

Will - there are some of us Yanks who really appreciate your valued insight and experience. Thank you!

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peter_act

Had a look at the feedback form - far too many hoops to jump through for no reward.
Being a hard nosed Aussie, I never give my email for free, I always ask "What's in it for me?

By the way, this technique works wonders for those annoying telephone calls asking for a few minutes of your time - I always answer "Sure, how much are you paying?", usually followed by a deathly silence.

The steakhouse should offer a free coffee or something in return for filling out all those fields - that's standard marketing practice.

As for re-engineering the site to get that look - have a look at a few WSOs of offline wordpress themes - a lot of them will do what you want with no css coding involved.

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joey19333

I will have to agree with WillR here. Although it's fancy, it's not really suited for mobile users. I ran this mobile site through w3c mobileok checker and it returned a score of 66. That's pretty low for a mobile website. So I think it can certainly do better.

Minista

This mobile Website is using modified version of the jquerymobile framework.

Honestly this Website is very basic, but it looks good.

For the question:
How much time would it take to develop such a mobile site?

With a good software if the customer provide the images that mobile Website could be designed on less than 3 hours. You can charge from 500 to 1500$ easily for that job.

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kibria4mbd

Nice website. But i feel some uncomfortable there.

Kibria hosain
Online research & affiliate learner