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Drupal for Mobile & Smart Tablet

Drupal for Mobile and Smart Tablets

For any business to stand a chance in today’s mobile driven world, your customers must be able to access you 24-7. We can give your customers the ability to reach you using the piece of technology that's always with them, whether it’s their iPhone, smartphone or tablet. At Sage Tree Solutions we tailor responsive mobile web applications that will allow your Drupal site to adapt to any mobile device, whenever and wherever your customers want. We can make your existing Drupal site mobile ready, create custom themes for specific devices or create a new site that is brimming and ready with mobile possibilities. Let’s go mobile, call us today (866) 728-9100.

Sage Advice: Ready to Take Your Drupal Site Mobile? Part Two: Mobile-Only Solutions

This second installment of, "Ready to Make Your Drupal Site Mobile?" investigates the options available to Drupal site owners concerned about making their sites accessible to a mobile audience. In the last post, we explored the reasons and methods for going responsive. This time we'll look at the pros and cons of building a separate mobile experience or application for a Drupal website.

Mobile Version

If sacrificing a beautiful, full-featured desktop layout for the pleasure of hand-held and tablet users is not an option, consider a separate mobile site. Organizations with especially complex sites from the San Diego Union-Tribune to ESPN to USA.gov offer mobile users a simplified version of their websites.

Mobile Theme

Some site owners opt to have a mobile-only theme rather than a completely different build. In this scenario, the browser detects the device and serves up an optimized theme accordingly.On the surface this seems like a simple solution, however mobile menus, blocks, contexts and views must be specifically designed for the mobile experience and need to live side-by-side with the existing pieces of the site.

Mobile App

The third approach - sometimes done in conjunction with the previous two - is to build a mobile app. Instead of going to a browser like Safari or Bing, the user will download the app and access the data that way. Of course, apps may never reach 100% of mobile users. One reason being that the user has to take the extra step of going to the Android or Apple Store installing and in some cases paying for what they can get free on their desktops. The advantage of a mobile app is having complete control of the user's experience.

Conclusions

There are no short cuts to having a great mobile site. Experienced developers can ease a client's pain by providing a clear options based on the company's specific needs and current website architecture. Responsive web design is certainly the ideal choice, but not always an option. At Sage Tree we work with clients upfront to discover the most viable option for taking their site mobile. A well prepared client will have metrics for their curent site or in-depth research on their target market.

Sage Advice: Ready to Take Your Drupal Site Mobile? Part One: The Responsive Approach

The world of the mobile web has arrived. Among US adults, 25% own tablet computers and the vast majority have smartphones. Some predict mobile web traffic will surpass desktop traffic in the nex few years. This two-part blog post looks at the options for Drupal site owners concerned about making their sites accessible to the next generation of users.

Responsive: One Site Fits All

Responsive websites look good on any device regardless of screen- and browser-width. By using a design that is flexible and touch-screen friendly you ensure that users have a great web experience no matter how they access your site. Sites that are going to be rebuilt or redesigned today should absolutely consider responsive web design. To see responsive web design in action, go to Comic-Con.org and resize your browser window!

The Good and the Bad

Add Pages Not Regions

For most of web design history we've been able to expand the number of footers, blocks, sidebars, links, slideshows, images and menus with relatively few drawbacks. In the mobile world, those extra pieces of information can make a site painfully slow. When designing, ask your team: do our visitors really need this feature, does it need to be on every page and can it live on its own page? If the feature can live on its own page rather than in a sidebar, your visitors will have a lot less roundabout scrolling to do.

Consolidate Menus

On a hand-held device, you simply don't have the real estate to employ several menu structures. Figure out what pages and features are most often accessed by your audience and from there decide where you can consolidate and simplify the menu structure. Knowing your audience is essential to any site design, but especially important for mobile versions. A tool like Google Analytics is a good resource of information if you have a pre-existing site.

Forget the Slideshow?

Everybody loves slideshows, right? They may be pretty, but they can significantly weigh down a site. A slideshow that also works on a wide desktop screen can turn a 50K page to a full MB (that's 20x the size). This means page load time will be significantly slowed down which can be frustrating to the people visiting your site. Frustrated visitors will usually click away from your site, which in turn hurts your search engine rankings.

Sidebar Right not Left

Sure, you can can move around elements in a mobile page with a little javascript, but things can fall into the mobile space easily by simply using the "mobile-first" thought process for site architecture. From an ease-of-programming standpoint, go with a right sidebar instead of a left sidebar. The right sidebar will naturally fall under the main body text on smaller screens.

Which Base Theme Should You Use?

At Sage Tree, we like using the Omega base theme for most of our Drupal 7 responsive sites. It's flexible, extendable and has a high Drupal community addoption rate, meaning themers from a variety of backgrounds are all speaking the same language. As with most newer Drupal themes, Omega is designed to be responsive and mobile-friendly "out of the box". Right now we'd say Omega is the best choice for the vast majority of responsive use cases out there.

The Bottom Line

If you're ready for a site redesign and new architecture, responsive is definitely the way to go. You'll make those viewing your site on their smart phones and tablets extremely happy not to have to pinch, zoom and scroll like crazy. Desktop and mobile users alike can have access to all of your sites features and content by taking  the "mobile-first" design approach. With proper forethought and consideration, you can have a Drupal site that is easy to maintain and serves a rapidly growing marketplace of smart phone and tablet users.

Portfolio Project: LogosBibleStudy.org and Mobile App

We worked with Logos Bible Study to provide their website with new improvements and upgrades. We brought the site up-to-date, improved speed and functionality and made the site easily expandable. As a result, they are positioned to take on the challenges of a rapidly growing user base that demanded the latest in technological advances.

Portfolio Project: The Big Bay

We partnered with EventsOnline to develop a new website for Big Bay intended to enhance the marketing for the Port of San Diego. As part of this effort to stimulate patronage at restaurants, hotels and attractions along San Diego’s waterfront, we delivered a Joomla solution customized to the Port’s needs. We configured their servers, created a business directory, built an events database that is integrated with Google Calendar, and designed a photo gallery. Once the website was completed, we built a mobile site, re-enhancing the original site in order to support mobile browsers.

Portfolio Project: ATPWorldTour.com - Mobile Site

In conjunction with Digitaria, Sage Tree Solutions developed a mobile, .net, aspx site for the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). We enhanced the functionality of ATP’s mobile templates so that the mobile site would match the normal computer interface. We also updated the sites theme to give ATP’s followers greater ease of use.    

Portfolio Project: AppinessFulfilled.com

In collaboration with Digitaria, we built a D7 mobile application for a sweepstakes held by Verizon Wireless. Appinessfullfilled.com features the sweepstakes prizes that contest participants can win and promotes the latest Verizon apps.

 

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