By now, we all know the importance of building responsive websites that dynamically adjust to any screen size. According to Statista, 52 percent of all global web pages served in 2018 were viewed on smartphones. And now that Google’s index is mobile first, it’s essential for websites to be designed (or redesigned) mobile first — with a smartphone screen size as the starting point, and resizing up from there.
Building a site to be fully responsive starts with organizing your content so it can be browsed and read on even the smallest smartphone. Whether you’re creating content for a new site, or restructuring a legacy site, begin with a responsive content strategy that defines how you will optimize and structure content for mobile users.
Here are the key components of responsive (and mobile first) content strategy:
1. Be mobile first
When you begin planning content, start with the smallest screen size and work your way up. This will allow you to tackle the most challenging task first, and it will help you make the most of the smallest interface. This process is also very effective for eliminating unnecessary content elements that you may be tempted to include if you’re designing desktop first. An effective and efficient mobile-first design will more easily translate to a clean desktop design (rather than trying to scale down your desktop design).
2. Structure your content first, design later
Begin by stripping all the design elements from your text content. Develop and structure your content, add it to your Drupal 8 CMS and then apply styling and design.
3. Optimize and structure your content for mobile
Responsive content needs to be modular so it will easily break into mobile-friendly pieces. And it needs to be skimmable, so mobile readers can easily consume it.
Create less content (if that’s an option) and keep it short. Organize website copy into small, granular paragraphs or chunks, no longer than three paragraphs. Add subtitles that define each piece, so mobile users can easily browse and scan content.
Working in your Drupal CMS, define separate fields for different pieces of content. The more fields you create for your content, the more flexibility you will have. In other words, you’ll have a field for a title, subtitle, pull-quote, body text, instructions, etc. Each field can be uniquely styled according to its content type. Then prioritize fields based on their importance so they stack in a logical way on a user’s screen — the most important content up top, less useful content can be condensed, stacked below, or even hidden.
4. Simplify navigation
Nobody wants to browse a mega menu that consumes their entire smartphone screen. The ubiquity of mobile means menus need to be reduced and simplified. Put a lot of thought into how you will make your most important content accessible via your menu. How many menu items can you remove or de-prioritize? Flatten your navigation — stop nesting menus inside menus inside menus and instead create fewer layers and way less navigation points. If you’ve decided to take links out of the menu, you can add them elsewhere as links or call to action.
5. Be strategic with your calls to action
Take the time to prioritize your calls to action. On mobile, it’s even more important to define your most important CTAs — the ones that directly impact your business objectives. List your objectives in order of importance, and align a call to action with each one. Then choose objective that’s most critical to your bottom line. This is the only CTA that should live above the fold on your mobile screen.
6. Optimize media
Make sure your sound, video and image files are optimized for devices large and small. Always use image thumbnails so users don’t have to load a video player. And never, never use autoplay on your video and audio content.
For images, start with image sizes and proportions that can be adapted. And don’t resize or add image treatments before adding images to your CMS — let Drupal do the heavy lifting (just like you did with your text content). Images should not be larger than you need them to be (even on large screens). Rely on Drupal 8’s Responsive Image module to resize images to the screen-appropriate size.
7. Begin the long, hard task of cleaning up legacy content
Of course, there’s always the large, old-school website that needs to have its content converted to mobile first. In addition to all the content tips we’ve outlined above, you want to dive into that static HTML and clean it up. Remove fixed-width tables, inline media and floats with content (ouch). And on the content level, start to structure long content into browsable chunks that can be organized into content fields.
Mobile first: it’s universal
Many of us been applying similar content guidelines and strategies for quite some time; but the need for a mobile-first approach was not universal. It was dependent on the project, technology used, the target user, etc. In today’s digital ecosystem, mobile-first has become a given. Now it’s time to explore the creative potential for creating sharp, sparse, targeted content that fits in the palm of a user’s hand.