Look away from your screen for a second. Go ahead; I’ll wait. What’s going on in the world around you? Are any other people looking up from their screens, or are they all just as absorbed as you were a moment ago?
It’s not just your imagination. According to comScore’s 2016 Mobile App Report, total digital media time grew 53 percent from 2013 to 2016, and 80 percent of that growth was driven by mobile apps. The point is, we haven’t all turned into zombies — we’ve just altered our focus to take in content at an almost constant rate.
Maybe it’s time we adjust to this new world, with more mobile-focused efforts.
To keep your company from being left behind in the ever-expanding mobile world, you need to make content accessible to users where they spend most of their time. This means formatting it and making sure it’s friendly and ready for mobile users to engage with.
The limitations of mobile hardware
A strong mobile strategy is vital to keeping an audience’s attention because, to put it bluntly, that’s where those people are. If your content isn’t available on mobile, you lose eyes — and a slew of potential users.
For this effort, understanding the hardware limitations of each operating system (along with what specs the largest audience has) is vital. Modern websites often employ animation and video to augment the customer visit and create a more engaging experience. Unfortunately, these don’t always work as planned on mobile devices — if they even work at all.
Auto-playing videos on an iPhone is a beast all its own. To reach the largest audience, your content needs to be accessible on the widest range of devices possible.
Strengthening mobile-focused efforts
With so many people consuming mobile content, you need to design in a mobile-friendly way. Here are a few design considerations to keep in mind:
1. Start using “media queries.” This concept will save your life when it comes to content. Media queries are specialized style sheets that tell a website to recognize what size screen or type of device someone is using to surf the web. This provides the visual style sheet that’s right for the device accessing it.
You don’t need to understand how to program style sheets yourself, but your web…