The increasing popularity of mobile internet and high competition in the business world has made it virtually impossible for any marketers, organizations, corporates and advertisers to exist without a Mobile compatible website.
Nowadays even busy consumers are converting their non - productive time into value added activities using their Smartphone. With all services and necessities just a click away that to with a high speed data device, it is possible to stay connected with all the customers anywhere anytime.
Do you want your organization to be tossed aside in this competitive world? If your answer is no, then it is the right time to take advantage of the mobile Technology. After all you have to take decisions based on the interests of your targeted customers.
Why choose drupal for Mobile Friendly Website
There is no doubt that Drupal CMS is one of the most powerful and popular open source platform. With Drupal it is easy to manage, publish and organize wide variety of contents.
But the most inevitable advantage of choosing drupal is that, it works well for almost all devices including iPhone, iPad, android and even blackberry. With each improved version of Drupal from Drupal 7 to the latest Drupal 8, the focus is centered around a “Mobile first architecture“. So it meets even the future needs of Mobile Experience.
Apart from that Drupal provides some unique and mobile friendly themes and templates which are easier to use. It also provides additional tools useful for Mobile Websites like Mobile Tool module which inform users that a mobile version of the website is available.
With high security features of Drupal, it is possible to overcome almost all common security risks and attacks providing long time business security.
Options available to make mobile friendly website using drupal
Native Smartphone Applications
To identify the best way to provide contents on a smartphone, it is necessary that the mobile application has to meet the content requirements. With Drupal, building mobile apps has become easier and less confusing.
For Drupal sites, an open source mobile application development kit Drupal Gap is usually used. With Drupal Gap, it is easier to create and customize multi-platform Drupal mobile app that can communicate with the websites.
Such applications can be easily installed on almost all mobile devices. Once installed these mobile applications can be interfaced with Drupal Gap enabled site.
Native smartphones applications that provide unique and useful services, developed for mobile devices can produce high popularity and revenue potential. The distribution and subscription of apps can be done through the appstore or even the Google Play itself.
Also It opens up the application to all features of the mobile devices including GPS system, accelerometer, compass, map, gyroscope, text, video, camera and voice features.
Native apps can be configured to cache data locally, so even if device is out of range, applications works effectively.
Native apps using web services to retrieve data
The best method to retrieve data in this way is using native apps to contact drupal website through web services. It is simpler and Offloads much of data processing to Drupal Website. Also as data is stored in cloud, There is no need to redeploy new version of native application.
Usually Native application provide interface through native API. But since data can come from Drupal website, it allows users to access and update contents from any device.
Responsive web design
Can you imagine to read a full Website or even a single line on a mobile without any finger zooming? But so many finger zooming can make the users frustrated.
As per google reports more than half of Mobile users do not wish to revisit a website without a non-mobile theme.
There comes the role of Responsive Web design. It delivers Optimal viewing experience and easy navigation regardless of the size of user display, limitations or capabilities of the device being used. Drupal provides backing for web services as well as responsive web design.
Responsive themes use media queries to serve CSS. These media queries work in real time, so when a viewer rotates his smartphone, the media query updates the style sheets simultaneously to accommodate the full width of the device.
Responsive themes usually loads lower bandwidth items first in order to avoid any lag that occur while loading a webpage. Then when the media queries detect a larger screen display, it adds heavier graphics elements. Another advantage of responsive web design is the quick transition of legacy websites.
The most common and powerful Drupal themes are Omega, Adaptivetheme and Arctica. It reduces formatting of your Drupal website to meet your mobile device requirements.
Third party Gateways such as mobify
Third party Gateways play the role of a mediator between your existing site and mobile browser interface. Mobify is one such gateway which integrates with your existing website. If your organization need to build mobile capability without redesigning your website, then mobify helps
you in that.
Thus Drupal helps in simplifying and speeding up Theme development process with its modules and tools. Hence making it easy to serve mobile-optimized content.
As in the upcoming years, all what we need is, one site , one theme with simpler CSS and no duplicate content issues. This can be achieved using Drupal.
Valuebound is a leading Drupal development company based in Bangalore. Contact us for more information on how to create mobile compatible Website.
References:
http://digett.com/blog/05/24/2010/mobilize-your-drupal-site-mobile-tools
http://www.slideshare.net/ChadHart2/mobile-web-withdrupal
http://www.mobify.com/resources/mobify-drupal-plugin/
