By now you’ve heard about responsive design (last week we talked about it here). But if you’re like many of our clients who already have a web site, you may be wondering how to integrate responsive design into your current site. The answer may surprise you because it has very little to do with design.
The biggest challenge to good responsive design is not actually the design piece of it—the devices dictate much of how the site needs to look. Your challenge will be content.
To integrate responsive design into your new or existing site, you must research, analyze, and anticipate the user’s needs on each device. To properly develop your site for a variety of devices, you need to know your audience and you need to know what information they need from you depending on the device they’re using. For example, if you hold training classes at one of your facilities, chances are people viewing your site from a mobile device are looking for directions. In that instant, the thought-provoking video on your home page is of no interest to them…and may even be a hindrance. For many professional services firms, people are using their tablets to view your portfolio (or your sales team uses the tablet to access parts of your site during client meetings).
Anticipating what information people want depending on the device will help you develop the correct site architecture so that critical information is easy to find.
To develop your content strategy, ask yourself these questions:
- Who wants the information?
- What information are they most interested in?
- What devices do they use?
- When do they access the website?
- How can you improve their user experience?
Thinking about all this may seem daunting, especially when developing content for your web site alone seems to take forever. But it’s actually liberating, and will make your overall site better in the long run. Considering the different user needs for various devices and how to link all that together will force you to eliminate unnecessary content (and if you’re being honest, there is probably plenty of unnecessary content on your site). As your site(s) become more concise and targeted, your users will be happier.
Responsive design forces content specialists, designers, and the clients to prioritize. To integrate responsive design into your web site, you need to hone in and focus on your content. And that will help you develop more user-centric content—and web sites—in the long run.
Image courtesy of adamr / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
