Impact From Basic Responsive Design

Some website redesign projects can have a big impact, without being a big “to-do” in terms of style decisions. One great example of this is the recent basic responsive design PINT implemented for Beaver Medical Group.

Basic Responsive Redesign

The PINT team worked with BMG’s existing styling and design templates to create mobile breakpoints for the site. This means no design elements were changed, but the production team coded the page so browsers would understand how to stack content for more narrow browsers. Implementing these Responsive Web Design (RWD) styling points to the code meant that the content would be presented in a way that is easier for users on mobile devices to read and navigate.

This interim project made sense since the Beaver Medical Group team wanted to allocate the majority of their resources to a CMS upgrade, but still address this important issue.

Turns out, as much as 46% of traffic each month was coming to the site via a mobile device or tablet. This meant prioritizing some sort of mobile experience was pretty high on the list for the BMG team.

So far, the results are positive. In the time since the responsive breakpoints were added to the site, bounce rate from mobile users has decreased noticeably.

In addition, pages viewed per visit by users on mobile devices also increased after the update.

Ektron CMS Update

BMG was ready to update their CMS. It had been a little while since their last major upgrade, so there were some big advantages to upgrading:

• Security hardening and related improvements
• Access to the Ektron CMP feature for inbound marketing content management
• Improved workflow
• Better search performance

Now they are running on Ektron 9.1. Updating the CMS version may sound like a straightforward task, but in this case it was somewhat complex.

However, a newer Ektron also meant some newer hardware. One of the requirements for making the transition to Ektron 9.1 was the purchase and installation of a new 2012 Microsoft Windows server. The previous Windows server had reached the end of life and was no longer compatible with the latest stable version of Ektron and no longer supported by Microsoft. PINT DevOps (Development Operations) experts helped create a brand new server, install a the new version of Windows, as well as install and configure the new SQL server. They worked with the BMG team to select SQL Express. This option works for up to one database without the need for purchasing a license.

Basic Responsive Design Project Points

• • URL: https://www.beavermedicalgroup.com
• Project Type: Ektron CMS Upgrade + Integrating Responsive Design
• Technologies Used: Ektron 9.1
• PINT services: IT/Database; CMS Implementation; CSS