The Importance and Advantages of “Content First” Responsive web design

The main reason for going online is to access content. As the functionality of Web 2 is now firmly established, we easily access a diverse range of content through a variety of interfaces from watch faces to large 4 or 8k screens (Corry et al., 1997). The design of the User Interface (UI) to access this content is at the centre of the User Experience (UX) (Hui and See, 2015). Separating content and design allows the layout to be responsive to the viewing interface, while keeping the content consistent across viewing paradigms.

Fig 1. Examples of screen sizes

Taking a mobile design-first approach is more difficult but pragmatically, leads to a design that’s more content-focused, - due to the limited canvas available - and therefore, to a certain extent, user-focused. (Baturay and Birtane, 2013) – it is also easier to expand the design when a larger canvas is available. At the heart of the design is content — and as “Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking” (Google, 2021), inherently content is more findable.

For the creators, a user focused content modelling / strategy and planning is essential for user engagement and business goals.

This diversity of content, the editorial and interactions between content, inform both the content management, content strategy and hence design of the UX paradigm - beyond just textual content, it includes blog posts , images, videos, PDFs, and future content strategy.

The importance and advantage of this content first approach is reflected in its influence clarifying requirements of the responsive design, “critical in engaging users” (Garett et al., 2016) and development of the UX - users on any paradigm can access consistent content and the content creation process in relation to the aims, objectives, and target audience of the business/website, based on agreed style guide, with a uniform and familiar user interface across platforms.

A content first approach enables users to retrieve the content requested regardless of the access platform, responsive design strategy should prioritise the most important content as defined by the content strategy

responsive code base should result in fewer “bugs”, less development time across paradigms, (Baturay and Birtane, 2013)

as stated previously improved Google ranking and search returns.

focusing on the content, enables all the roles within the development team to collaborate more effectively,

producing a improved UX facilitating improved measurement of both content and UI effectiveness.

There are some disadvantages, reduced capacity for individual creativity – the need to accommodate different screen sizes, resolutions consistently with fewer tools. Uncertainty with a content/mobile first approach for those invested in the desktop experience. Increased time, development and training costs involved in understanding a content first approach. As websites are content driven, that is what the users search for, and as new or different screen sizes and form factors emerge, the layouts will have to respond.

The XHTML/5 and CSS standards will evolve and help meet the design challenges of a changing landscape of devices and canvases.

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Bibliography

BATURAY, M. H. & BIRTANE, M. 2013. Responsive Web Design: A New Type of Design for Web-based Instructional Content. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 106, 2275-2279
CORRY, M. D., FRICK, T. W. & HANSEN, L. 1997. User-centered design and usability testing of a web site: An illustrative case study. Educational Technology Research and Development, 45, 65-76.
GARETT, R., CHIU, J., ZHANG, L. & YOUNG, S. D. 2016. A Literature Review: Website Design and User Engagement. Online journal of communication and media technologies, 6, 1-14.
GOOGLE. 2021. Mobile-first Indexing Best Practices | Google Search Central [Online]. Available: https://developers.google.com/search/mobile-sites/mobile-first-indexing [Accessed 14/11/2021 2021].
HUI, S. L. T. & SEE, S. L. 2015. Enhancing User Experience Through Customisation of UI Design. Procedia Manufacturing, 3, 1932-1937.

Doug Neil (Don5) Student ID:199009482

The Importance and Advantages of “Content First” Responsive web design

Bibliography