Mobile Marketing, Simplified: The Drupal 8 Mobile Initiative
An average person’s mobile device is never more than an arm’s length away giving marketers the ability to reach target customers anyplace, at anytime. The last thing that you want is for a visitor to tap on a button that doesn't respond and end up frustrated by your mobile website experience.
Drupal 8 is looking to solve that problem. True to the community’s open source roots, a large group of developers are working together on Drupal’s Mobile Initiative, created with the goal to make the Drupal 8 CMS a top-notch mobile platform in today’s increasingly mobile world.
From a technical standpoint, the Drupal Mobile Initiative aims to address several key issues with Drupal 8 such as
- making all themes responsive,
- better usability on the front-end,
- use of administrative forms on mobile, and
- native app integration.
It will give users a much more satisfying experience on their mobile devices with quick to load, easy to use responsive design and it will make it easy for marketers to adjust their websites on the go.
Mobile Accessibility
The increasing use of mobile devices for instant information means that the content on your website should be easily accessible through mobile, and the Drupal Mobile Initiative will help that happen. Themes and modules have been developed for easy integration with JQuery Mobile, a framework that allows for cross-platform development of high-speed, easy-to-use mobile sites.
Drupal 8 means faster access to customers, as well as a decreased chance of drop offs due to site speed frustration-- two things that make marketers’ jobs infinitely easier.
Making Mobile Editing a Reality
Drupal 8 is not only friendly for visitors, it’s friendly to editors, too. A main goal of the Drupal Initiative is to include the full admin toolbar and capabilities when logged-in to a Drupal 8 site on a mobile device.
The admin toolbar is responsive and can be viewed on a mobile device both horizontally and vertically. This will make it easier than ever for marketers to manage their websites' content anywhere, at any time.
The ability to create and edit content on the go could make all the difference for the freshness of your site. Do you want to allow participants to liveblog a convention or event from a tablet or smartphone? Comment on the fly? Add products to a marketplace? Update a travel journal? Creating user-generated content promotions with Drupal 8 will be incredibly easy and it’s something we’re looking forward to putting into practice here at Volacci.
A Powerful Tool in the Digital Marketer's Toolkit
In short, Drupal 8’s Mobile Initiative will be a powerful marketing tool. The ability to provide new and relevant content to your website on the go will will meet Google’s love of hyper-fresh results leading to higher rankings. Your readers will love your easy-to-use, instantly accessible, mobile website.
Drupal 7's powerful and flexible platform already makes it a great CMS for marketers. The mobile advantages being built into Drupal 8 will allow marketers to take their game even higher.
For more information check out the Drupal 8 Mobile Initiatives Group on GDO.