How To Make Your Content More Responsive

Many organizations are discovering the benefits of responsive web design.

As Shannon noted in her post, a responsive site easily adapts to different screen resolutions and devices. Most responsive strategies revolve around mobile, tablet and the full web.

When you consider your responsive strategy, it’s important to focus on navigation needs, design elements and the development requirements.

At the same time, make sure your content is also responsive. Like all effective user experiences, responsive content should offer users the right information at the right time.

Responsive sites, of course, account for the varying ways we consume information on different devices. It’s easy to assume that users want less content on a smaller device. However, it’s less about content quantity – and more about quality and timeliness.

A great place to start is Luke Wroblewski’s book on mobile design. In his excerpt available on A List Apart, Wroblewski outlines several typical mobile interaction types:

• Lookup/Find (urgent info, local): I need an answer to something now—frequently related to my current location in the world.
• Explore/Play (bored, local): I have some time to kill and just want a few idle time distractions.
• Check In/Status (repeat/micro-tasking): Something important to me keeps changing or updating and I want to stay on top of it.
• Edit/Create (urgent change/micro-tasking): I need to get something done now that can’t wait.

If you combine these interaction types with customer personas and your core content strategy, your responsive content needs begin to emerge. You’ll be able to align content with common user needs for each device type—and your navigation, design and content will become much more integrated, no matter the device.