By BILL SHUMWAY

“Why did you make the change?”

That’s one of the most frequent questions we have received since the new mobile-friendly North Country Now website went online about two weeks ago.

The answer – three reasons.

• First, since nearly 60 percent of viewers now visit NCNow on a phone or tablet instead of on a computer, we want our site to be easily viewed by mobile users.

• Second, we are striving to make sure the many St. Lawrence County businesses and organizations that advertise on NCNow get the best-possible results from their ads.

• Third, we believe it is important that the design and layout of NCNow stay current and be in line with what is becoming the standard worldwide.

Viewers who visit many websites daily on their cell phone and are familiar with the “hamburger menu” – the three lines to the right of the NCNow logo – tell us our mobile site is a big improvement.

But people who don’t have a lot of experience with newer mobile sites have been frustrated because they are not familiar with the new navigational experience that the “hamburger menu” provides.

Visit http://northcountrynow.com/find-weather-sp for details on how to use the “hamburger menu”

No Need To Enlarge Screen

Previously, you couldn’t read NCNow on your phone without “swiping” it to enlarge the screen. That meant it took two hands to view our site and usually, the ads were swiped off the screen where they could not be viewed.

Now, once you are familiar with using the “hamburger menu,” you can view NCNow on your phone using just one hand, a benefit for multi-taskers. No longer do you need to use two hands to swipe and enlarge the page each time you view a story on your phone.

We suggest viewers just remember to “click, click, click” the “hamburger menu.” Click on the number to the right of each category – you will discover all of your favorite pages are available.

Before, viewers had to scroll down the screen, swipe to enlarge the screen and then click the story they were interested in. Then, they had to enlarge the screen again each time they started reading a new story.

Now, stories can be viewed without enlarging the screen.

To return to the home page after finishing a story, click the NCNow logo at the top of the page.

Fewer But Bigger Ads

Another major change viewers are noticing on our new mobile site is that there are many fewer ads. But the ads that do appear are much bigger.

And that is good for both our advertisers and viewers.

Advertisers will now benefit from ads with much greater impact when seen by viewers. We are also discovering the “click-through rate” – the number of people who click on an ad to view the advertisers’ website for more information – is higher with our new mobile ads.

That’s good for readers, because many of them value the advertising information provided by St. Lawrence County businesses and institutions. In addition, we believe most viewers would rather be exposed to local advertisements than be asked to pay a subscription fee to visit NCNow.

One way or the other, we have to make sure we can pay the 20 employees who work hard to keep NCNow updated many times a day, 365 days a year.

Up-To-Date Design

A quick visit to prominent news sites across the country – from www.WashingtonPost.com to www.OswegoCountyToday.com – demonstrates that the “hamburger menu” and a mobile-friendly design is quickly becoming the norm.

While we are referring to our new site as “mobile-friendly,” it is actually a “responsive design” site. That means it displays differently depending on what device it is viewed on.

People viewing NCNow on computers or laptop will notice the site looks very similar to what they are used to. Those visiting NCNow on tablets will see a different view and people on phones will see yet another version of NCNow.

When people first starting visiting websites on their phones about a decade ago, some sites created mobile sites that were separate from the desktop version. That required keeping wo different sites updated.

But as more and more devices of varying sizes have become popular in recent years, that system no longer works as well. “Responsive design” is what many new sites are using.

“Responsive design” provides better display on most devices and a more efficient method of keeping updated because just one site needs to be updated instead of two.

We are still discovering some glitches in our new site, and on a few Android devices NCNow is not displaying correctly.

We hope to resolve those issues soon.