Mobile content strategy

from Nokia's Forum.

Choosing which content to serve to your mobile website requires a good understanding of your users and the devices they use. Most mobile sites should be simpler than the corresponding desktop version as mobiles have lower processing power, a smaller screen, browsing sessions are often shorter and users have no mouse with which to manipulate the content.

Despite all this, mobile sites should not be ‘dumbed down’ versions of the original, but rather a version that has been targeted to a mobile context and user behaviour.

• Study user behaviour. Speak to and observe existing users of your desktop site. Ask them what types of tasks they would like to perform while on the go.
• Simplify your content. This does not mean reducing the size of articles but rethinking what content is required and how you present it. Does the site really need a slide show? Would a static image gallery convey the information equally well? In fact, you may not need a large collection of images at all. A single, well-chosen image, paired with a paginated article may suit your users just fine.
• Reconsider your approach to advertising. Common desktop practices such as filling a sidebar with ads, displaying ads inline within an article, or presenting ads which the user must ‘skip’ to view the content, are not suitable on mobile devices. Your users will be annoyed far more quickly on mobile if they are forced to download (and possibly incur data charges for) large quantities of advertisements.
• Paginate longer articles. Pagination enables users to explicitly choose which content to download. If the first page of the article isn’t interesting, they can move on. If the reading session is interrupted, the user can more easily return to the exact spot at a later time. Pagination also reduces the need for anchor points within the content, and the likelihood that content page weight exceeds browser capacity.
• Adapt content to the mobile context. Create mobile-actionable data such as URLs, email addresses, phone numbers and dates using the browser’s supported URI schemes. This enables the user to, in one click, perform actions that would otherwise require keyboard input.
• Serve mobile-appropriate content. Ensure all content served is appropriate to the device. This includes not only content size, but media format and scripting. For example, some devices may not support the png image format, HTML 5 video or certain versions of Flash Lite. Always determine device capabilities before serving the content. This can be accomplished in advance through server-side detection or ‘just in time’, on the client. See Device Detection for more details.
• Enhance content and functionality on more capable browsers. The most effective way to avoid oversimplifying your mobile site is to detect browser capabilities and progressively enhance functionality for more capable browsers.
  
  
  Mobile content strategy