Here in the future it's a safe bet that 40% or more of the traffic to your website comes from devices, not from computers. People reading your blog on the train trip home from work, someone frantically price checking a product on your site while they're at the shopping centre, someone whipping out the credit card to tap the details into their tablet.

When we started Jack Marlow back at the end of 2008 we wanted to build a platform that our clients would not only love to use, but would deliver them real results on the web.

A lot has changed in 6 years! Back then the iPhone was only a year old, the iPad didn't even exist yet and the various netbook/ultrabook crazes had yet to play out.

Websites that work brilliantly on a computer won't necessarily work as well on phones, or on tablets - as you've probably found yourself. There's nothing worse than trying to find somewhere to eat or stay when you're travelling, only to land on site after site that's built for laptops or desktops so it's either unreadable or completely broken on your phone.

The solution to this is Responsive Design. Without getting too technical, this is a way of building websites so:

• They work on everything
   
• You, the site owner, control how they look on everything
   
• None of your visitors ever get that "left out" feeling, so you get more leads - and more sales.

All new websites we've built since April are responsive; they'll work across all devices from desktop to smartphone and everything in between.

Side Note: We'll be getting in touch with each of our clients over the next few months to discuss how we can help get you the advantages of this upgrade without spending a mountain of cash on a new site!

Time for a Change

We've made incremental upgrades to the software that runs all our websites over the last few years, but while we've talked about a major reimagining on and off for the last couple of years, we'd never stopped and taken a breath to do it.

So we decided back in May to do it. Hit the reset switch on our software; strip the top layer off and rebuild everything that faces our clients, so we could:

• Take into account feedback we've had from you guys over the years
   
• Give you something that'll help you make the most of what your website can already do
  
  
• Grab the opportunities that responsive design presents for your business

Since then we've worked with people both within the existing team and externally, including a small crew of Alpha and Beta testers among our clients and resellers (thanks for your ideas, patience, and feedback guys!).

Now, five months on, we're ready to let it loose.

What's New?

There are literally hundreds of improvements we've made to the software, here's just a few of the things we've done:

• Your admin tools have been redesigned to work brilliantly with gadgets right down to smartphone size - check your enquiries on your iPad, process sales from your phone.
  
  
• A new full-screen dashboard replaces your Control Panel and a few other tools - much better and cleaner insights into how you're travelling, and easier advanced control over your site.
  
  
• A drag-and-drop multicolumn page editor to let you lay out each page exactly how you'd like including controlling how it changes across devices
   
• Built-in preview tools to check how your site looks on a phone/tablet/laptop from your desktop
   
• Drag-and-drop multiple images and files from your desktop onto products, into blog posts, etc.
   
• A beautiful new WYSIWYG editor for your text and images
   
• A beautiful new blogging tool that makes it easy to write long-form content, break it up with images, tag your posts, integrate to external comment platforms and more..
   
• In-place editing of content on each page with instant updates as you make changes
   
• Direct control over your colour scheme, logo, line spacing, and fonts (available on new websites for Resellers and for select clients only)

I could bang on and on for hours about what an awesome job the team have done and how much cool new stuff there is to show off, but the real proof is in the tools themselves!

All our clients will be getting this upgrade free of charge over the next few weeks.

So Here's What's Next

Later this month we'll be posting demo videos showing how the upgrades to the CMS can make your life easier.

We're looking for some clients and resellers to be involved in Beta Testing during the rest of this month - ring the office if you're keen.

More updates to come; we can't wait to get this in your hands.