TOPIC:

First, thanks for all the excellent work you're doing on FTH. You've given us plenty to work with, and I appreciate it more than I can say.

I understand how huge a job it would be to upgrade the system to be responsive to mobile users, but I'd like to propose a stopgap that might help solve a lot of problems.

The main problem we're having is that when I check our site's usage thru Google Analytics, I notice that Windows users often spend time looking through our site (we've been adding a lot of content) but the Android and iOS users tend to enter, and leave in a matter of seconds, usually not checking anything out.

Of course, trying to navigate the site thru a small screen has to be frustrating, but what if you added a button for mobile users, prominently visible when the site appears on their phones? This would lead to a special page, without the menus and such, which would be readable on a small phone screen, and which we could set up ourselves?

This would at least be able to present some info to our mobile visitors (especially time & place info), and we might encourage them to check out the rest of the site another time, on another system.

When I see just how many mobile visitors just peek at our site and then bounce right out, I worry about how many potential members are slipping through our fingers.

I would suggest you put your meeting information top center of your home page.

Unfortunately, when we access the FTH site thru a phone, the top center of the home page isn't what appears. What we see is the TI logo and a portion of the Main Menu, in a font that's way too small to be used by an index finger on a phone.

Faced with this, most mobile users bounce out of our site so quickly that Google Analytics doesn't even register the length of the session.

What might really help is a button, just above the Main Menu, with a title like "Phone-Friendly View." This could link to a phone-viewable page, that ideally would have much more than just meeting info. It's just a guess, but our tech-savvy, low-attention-span phone surfers probably need to see a friendly, fast pitch selling Toastmasters, and an invitation to visit.

If this would be very time-intensive to implement, I can understand not doing it, but I'd invite some of the tech staff to use Google Analytics to sample some of the mobile sessions on a FTH site, and compare them to the other sessions. You'll likely see a lot of potential members being lost to us on the mobile platforms.

At this time FTH is not 100% mobile compatible and depending on the size of the phone screen they see different amounts of the screen.

I use my phone to access my clubs FTH site I see the logo, the moving banner, and the top 14 left menu items. when I scroll left I see the club name, address and meeting times.

Since you can see the top of the menu If you want to add a menu item to go to another page you have that ability

Hi Brian... thank you for the suggestions. I fear though that they may distract from the main problem.




The problem is that the vast majority of mobile users are leaving our site just seconds after entering it.




The non-mobile users OTOH, are largely hanging around and browsing the site. I can see this using Google Analytics, and others ought to have no trouble duplicating my results.

I understand that FTH is not 100% mobile compatible, and wouldn't ask you to change that.

What I have suggested is the addition of just one tiny page that is mobile compatible.

You can rip out the menus, everything else on the left hand sidebar, and even remove the logo from the top if you'd like. Make it the absolute bare minimum of a space we can fill; just one little space that mobile users can read without having to scroll in strange directions.

Your suggestions are worthwhile for us when we want to access our site by phone, but the mobile users seem just a little pickier. Yet I'm sure there are many potential Toastmasters among them, if we could only reach them.

I understand that this might not be practical, due to the way FTH is structured. If so, then we just do what we can with what we have. Let me know it that's true, and we can move on.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

You will have to work with a work-a-round within the existing framework until such time as FTH supports mobile devices natively

A possible work-around if you have a club Google Drive / Dropbox / Box or other cloud storage:

Set up a suitable document for mobile "visitors" in your cloud storage account and get the URL. Use a floater (Documentation here: support.toastmastersclubs.org/doc/item/floater-messages) with a link to the external URL. Alternatively put a link for mobile visitors in at the top left of your home page (where you have your current "About our club" link). That will open your external page without the menus on the left.

You have a great website - keep up the good work.

Pam... Thanks very much for your thoughts, and for the further details you provided in a private message. You put a lot of thought into helping others solve their problems; I'm guessing you have a large cadre of devoted friends. You've just gained another one.

Per your suggestion, putting a link in a floater message makes a prominently visible link when accessing our site thru a phone. I've found a free website hoster that doesn't add a charge for mobile formatting, and lets me hook in my Google Analytics ID, so I ought to be able to see when a mobile user goes to the separate mobile site. It's all very rudimentary so far, but at least now our mobile visitors have a little bit that they can read clearly.

And any other FTH users who want to add a touch of mobile visibility should have no trouble duplicating this kind of solution (or maybe suggesting ways of improving on it.)

Thanks again...