Cross-device Portability Demands, Part V
Posted on Saturday, July 30, 2016 at 8:51 PM
Advertising lags behind editorial in adopting responsive Web design.
By
William Dunkerley
Editors are loving what responsive Web
design (RWD) is doing for their publications. Editors Only, our
sister publication, just did a mini-survey to sample opinions about RWD.
Here
are a few examples:
"It has simply made our content look better
and easer to use and access for our readers. I think it is essential to
have it today." --Dave Zoia, editorial director for WardsAuto
"Stories
just look much better with the new design, and look great on whatever
device -- tablet, phone, desktop, etc." --Kate Robertson,
director of editorial strategy for NowToronto.com
"Mobile Web
usage continues to increase, making responsive design essential for any
publication website." --Yvonne Hill, editor of Ensign magazine
Christopher
Coleman, technical manager for Science, explained:
"It's
important to think of content in terms of semantics and structure first,
and visual presentation second. If the structure is consistent, a
well-designed site will take care of the presentation. In the early days
of the Web, designers and producers were concerned only with
presentation, because the tools to do more just didn't exist. Today,
modern HTML and CSS give us the tools to create accessible content that
works well on all devices. Properly structured content will work well on
future designs and with technologies that we haven't even thought of yet.
"In
2016, responsive design is the only kind of Web design. Today's
mobile-first approach to front-end development means that responsive is
the default, and preventing a design from working well on all devices
would actually require extra effort. Since launching Science's
redesign in January of this year, we've seen a real year-over-year
increase in traffic and unique visitors. A disproportionate percentage
of this increase comes from mobile users taking advantage of our new
responsive design."
Advertising, however, has not kept up
with editorial at many publications. Non-responsive ads are shoehorned
into the editorial grid with results like this:
Example of the mobile view of a non-responsive ad being truncated.
This kind of thing cheats the advertiser of the results
that would be possible if the ad were somehow displayed in its entirety.
Quartz
magazine is one example of a publication that has taken the lead in
building responsive creative for its advertisers. This approach makes
the publication fully device agnostic, not just the editorial.
Desktop
view of ad appearing just above an editorial headline.
The same ad in mobile view.
You can see that the ad
consists of three separate modules. In the mobile view they are
rearranged and resized to give a presentation just as effective as the
desktop view.
If an ad is built modularly, it can be adapted well
to RWD. Here are three examples of another approach to constructing a
modular ad:
Four modules arranged horizontally in the desktop view.
For tablets they are arranged 2 by 2.
The
mobile view stacks the modules vertically.
These approaches
make advertising responsive to whatever device is being used by the
reader. When advertisers are given cross-device portability like this,
they'll truly be getting their money's worth. And that will make your
transition to RWD much more successful, too.
William Dunkerley
is principal of William Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, www.publishinghelp.com.
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