Let me guess—one of your pet peeves with the Internet is the difficulty you sometimes have in seeing and accessing information easily.
It's one of mine, too. I want to click on something and have it load quickly—no issues, no hassles. And once the story, photo, information or data appear, I want to be able to view all of it—easily—on any device I own that can access the Web. I don't want to have to scroll across the screen to see it.
Well, starting on March 20, that no longer was the case with nearly all of Tire Business' online offerings.
Tire Business has updated all of its websites and e-newsletters to what is called “responsive Web design.” In layman's terms that means no matter whether you are sitting at your desktop computer, using a tablet or mobile phone, information from Tire Business will be optimized to fit your screen. It will be very easy to read.
During this redesign, we've also added tools that readers have asked for in the past. It's now easier to respond to and comment on stories. We've also added a top stories feature, letting readers know the most popular stories on our site and which ones they've read. Articles also now have a reading progress bar to tell readers how close they are to the end of a story.
You may have noticed some of these changes in our e-newsletters. They went responsive over the past couple of weeks. This includes NewsMail, the daily e-newsletter sent each morning, breaking news alerts, Service Zone (Tire Business' online auto service newsletter) and Tire Business Latin America, which is published in Spanish and English and emailed quarterly.
Now Tirebusiness.com, has gone responsive, as well.
Getting to this point has been a herculean undertaking, requiring more than a year's worth of work by Tire Business Online Manager Alaina Scott and the Crain Communications Inc. interactive team. It required complete redesigns of the website and e-newsletters.
Still to come are updates to subscriber pages. Once they become responsive, it will be a breeze to sign up for all Tire Business online products as well as make changes and updates to subscriber information.
All of these moves are aimed at keeping Tire Business your No. 1 online source for tire and automotive service news, data and information.
Transitioning to responsive web design is just the latest effort to improve readers' online experience.
If you haven't checked out the Tire Business' Facebook, Twitter and Goog-le-plus pages recently, you'll notice they now offer more contests as a way of encouraging deeper reader engagement. We're also adding photo galleries, videos and more news and information to the Tire Business app to enhance its appeal and value.
Finally we've expanded the Tire Business Data Store offerings for sale of Excel and PDF versions of the latest charts, rankings, directories and statistical information shortly after they appear in print or online in the digital edition.
This upgrade to responsive Web design has been a long time coming. I hope you notice the changes immediately and have an enhanced user experience. And if you don't, or you have any questions, let us know. We'll be responsive that way, too.
Email your feedback or questions to Alaina Scott at [email protected] or call her at 330-865-6129.
Dave Zielasko is publisher and editor of Tire Business. This piece first appeared on www.tirebusiness.com. Have an opinion about this column? Send your comments to [email protected].