This blog post has been formatted to fit your screen.
Whether you are viewing this blog post on a laptop, tablet or mobile phone, you expect it to appear properly and specifically formatted for your device. Rarely do you think about this, unless a website’s content isn’t displaying properly.
There is nothing more frustrating than trying to view a webpage on a mobile device that is not mobile friendly. The horizontal scroll bar, the shrinking, the expanding, the agony!
Needless to say, a website that’s not designed for mobile devices does not make for an enjoyable user experience.
With the sheer number of devices and platforms where news is being consumed, you want to make sure that your message is displayed properly on all of the technological wonders of the world.
This is where the power of Responsive Web Design (RWD) comes in.
Responsive Web Design, or RWD, is the technology behind a site’s coding that allows it to respond to whatever screen size you are viewing it on. RWD allows you to have one version of the site that then adapts to the viewing device using a fluid grid system, flexible images and CCS media queries.
If you are unfamiliar with web design terminology and not sure of what that all means, the most important things to grasp are the words fluid and flexible.
Readers expect a seamless experience which includes ease of reading and navigation, regardless of the screen size of the device they are viewing it on, and that is what RWD helps to achieve.
As a project manager on PR Newswire’s MultiVu team, I work with clients to create multimedia news releases (MNRs). An MNR is a branded webpage that is a combination of text and multimedia assets designed to increase visibility and engagement through various distribution and social media channels.
During the creative process for multimedia news releases and other branded webpages, it’s sometimes helpful to draft a static mock-up of the page, in case you want to see whether your colors, fonts and certain page elements will complement one another.
However, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking about this page design solely in terms of a magazine or newspaper layout, obsessing over fixed margin size and headline or sub-headline breaks.
With a page like a multimedia news release, which RWD is built-in, this can become an issue.
While some page visitors will be accessing it on a desktop computer, many will be accessing it via a mobile device. Designing a page that readers can interact with on any device means overcoming our collective fixation with line breaks in headlines.
According to Pew Research Center, the portion of Americans who get their news on a mobile device has increased from 54% in 2013 to 72% in 2016. Outside of that, there are more than 2.6 billion smartphone users worldwide.
The number is only projected to go up from here as people rely more and more on technology on the go. Think of the segment of mobile users who potentially may be missing out on your message, or customers that weren’t converted due to an ineffective site design. Moreover, a mobile site makes it easily shareable on social media platforms.
All of these factors work to increase your visibility, and your search rankings. Google has expressed its preference for sites built with RWD. It is algorithm friendly, and in turn helps to improve SEO. This puts your news in front of more people, which is always the goal.
In short, RWD is an important functionality in today’s mobile world.
It’s an effective and efficient way to present your message on as many devices as possible. Being able to seamlessly view a site creates a positive user experience and is more likely to be shared, improving search rankings and conversions.
When creating content, it’s important to keep in mind that everything should be as fluid as possible. It should look great on the largest projector to the smallest cellphone screen. A tool that can be helpful when creating websites or thinking of page design for content like landing pages and multimedia news releases is The Responsinator. It gives you an idea of how your site will appear on a number of popular mobile devises.
RWD is at the forefront of digital design, and rightfully so. Trends indicate that 2017 will see more of a mobile-first design approach. As the world increasingly goes mobile, so shall the technology. All by way of RWD.
Every piece of content you produce is an ambassador for your brand. To learn more about PR’s impact on your discoverability and how to write news releases that drive engagement, download our white paper PR & SEO: Still Driving Discovery.
Author Ciaran Fitzgerald is a Project Manager for MultiVu, a PR Newswire Company.
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