Adjusting Your Content Strategy to Suit Multiple Digital Devices

Making adjustments to your web content strategy to suit multiple digital devices is no longer just a good idea – it’s become a necessity. With smartphones users tipped to total 1.75 billion in 2014 and tablets also rapidly increasing in profusion – the number of Android enabled devices alone is expected to surpass one billion this year – ensuring that your web content is compatible with multiple devices has no longer become a case of solely gaining a competitive edge over other businesses in your sector, but has become a requisite if your business is to reach out to as many people as it can. Your content strategy can’t, however, come at the expense of good website design – the importance of good website design is far too important to overlook – though it’s a mistake that some have been guilty of in a mad rush to make their content suitable – or as is often the case the same – across multiple devices. Therefore, your content strategy needs to be different for different devices, i.e. a strategy for your website and another for smartphones and tablets. Screen size matters – Making adjustments to allow for multi-screen usage In addition to making adjustments to allow for differences between your website to be viewed on a desktop PC or notebook and smartphones and tablets, you also need to make further adjustments to take into account further variations in screen size – a 10” iPad is a different kettle of fish altogether from a 4” smartphone. Here are a few important factors to consider with regard to screen size:

• Which devices are commonly used to access key content platforms
• How long users usually spend on each device and what they access
• What device do users use at what time of the day

These are factors that you’ll need to gain an understanding of and although conducting research into consumer behaviour isn’t always easy, it’s a reason in itself to get involved in analytics so that you can make informed decisions about how to engage visitors to your website and mobile site. Working with images – The need for scalability A lot has justifiably been made of the need for ‘breathing space’ for written content, i.e. white space, though it’s also important to bear in mind that images also need to be taken into account and that they need to be scalable so as to fit both the text size and the viewport. There are a few tools that can be used to assist you with this – or the web designer you’re working with if you’re not as tech savvy as you’d like to be – such as Focal Point, which crops responsive images so the image’s main focal point isn’t lost when viewed on smartphones and small tablets. In addition to scalable images, you also need to take into account the practice of ‘minification’, which aims to improve loading times by removing unnecessary characters from image source codes. Google is here to help – Accessing Google’s wealth of knowledge Google’s report, ‘Any Place, Any Time, Any Device – Building Websites for the Multi-screen Consumer’, is an excellent place to start your research into how to create an effective content strategy for multiple devices. Of the issues the report can help you make sense of, included are:

• Preparing to go mobile: creating familiar experiences, user context, etc.
• Choosing the right technology: responsive web design, dynamic serving, the need for a separate mobile site, etc.
• Creating great user experiences: content, layout, speed, etc.
• Measuring your success: ad campaigns, content checks, mobile reports, etc.

Work with the right people – It’s what you know AND who you work with Unless you’re a cutting-edge web designer with an in-depth knowledge of digital marketing you’ll need to work with the right people – an award winning digital marketing agency and website designers of a similarly high calibre – if your content strategy is to bear fruit across multiple devices. Working with experts to create a content strategy that succeeds across multiple devices doesn’t mean you’re taking a backseat approach, but rather that you’re putting yourself in the best possible position for your efforts to come to fruition and bear the fruit that you want to see.