New Race Website Mobile Optimizations

With over half of the traffic on RunSignUp coming from mobile phones (and another 10% coming from tablets), we are working hard to make the new race website very mobile friendly. Here are some of the cool things we are doing near term:

Optimize Images. We are actually creating multiple sizes of the cover images and will display the size most appropriate for the device. This means a laptop would see the full 1220X400 pixel image in a browser, but on a mobile phone you do not need that much resolution. This saves bandwidth and makes the page faster to download.

Content Delivery Network. All of the static content for your race website (images, CSS, Javascript, etc.) is being sent to your participant’s mobile devices by Amazon’s Content Delivery Network – over a dozen more local and network optimized locations around the US that make things as speedy as possible for users.

Using the Right Keyboard. When you are asking participants for numbers (like their credit card), we pop up the number editor, not the regular keyboard. Little things like that reduce customer frustration, speed check-out and lower the chance they will abandon the process of signing up for your race.

Clean Mobile Menu. The flexible menu system works great on mobile as well.

In the next month or two, we will be adding options for fast checkout. These will include auto-filling information for participants who already have signed up for a race with RunSignUp like basic info, but also things like Emergency Contact and Shirt Size. We will also be giving you the ability to turn off requirements for certain fields like street address or custom questions if they are on a mobile phone.