{"id":1151,"date":"2015-10-09T12:04:54","date_gmt":"2015-10-09T11:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/?p=1151"},"modified":"2016-04-26T16:53:43","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T15:53:43","slug":"go-mobile-the-story-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/2015\/10\/09\/go-mobile-the-story-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Go Mobile: the Story So Far"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our\u00a0<strong>Go Mobile<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>programme<\/strong> is up and running: 17, <strong>yes<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>17 (!) sites<\/strong>\u00a0went live in September.<\/p>\n<p>Phase 1 (our \u2018beta\/test\/is this even possible\u2019 phase) was a success. And because of this, we\u2019re going to carry on and put the rest of our external-facing website through the programme.<\/p>\n<h2>Go mobile explained<\/h2>\n<p>Go Mobile is a project to make our website mobile responsive. This means it works on desktop computers as well as tablets and mobile phones.<\/p>\n<p>But we\u2019re not making things easy for ourselves. As well as adding a responsive design we\u2019re also:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>improving content \u2013 <strong>rewriting for mobile<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>updating assets \u2013 our new <strong>design needs higher quality images <\/strong>to support content<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>moving to a <strong>new content management system<\/strong> (TerminalFour &#8211; T4)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can see some examples in action:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/openday\">Open Day<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/about\">About<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/nuls\">Law School<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/biology\">School of Biology<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/ageing\">Institute for Ageing<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Oh no! Why have they changed everything?<\/h2>\n<p>Some of our feedback, particularly from University staff, has been unhappiness that we\u2019ve changed or moved things. Remember <strong>we\u2019re doing this for the greater good<\/strong>!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Our websites now work just as well <strong>on mobile<\/strong> as on huge desktop screens. Go Mobile is about <strong>improving access for all<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2>Key developments cover navigation, design and content<\/h2>\n<h3>NAVIGATION<\/h3>\n<p>How you move through pages needs to be\u00a0simpler and easier\u00a0for mobile (smaller screens). Navigation is improved for those using desktops too. We&#8217;ve made sites shallower and removed redundant content.<\/p>\n<h3>DESIGN<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Design enhances\u00a0your website\u00a0but doesn\u2019t rule it<\/strong>.\u00a0We\u2019re always thinking about what our users want from the web content. For example, we\u2019ve made sure that images are impactful and support our messages. But we\u2019ve made sure that our template prioritises for you: on mobile, images shrink and drop under content.<\/p>\n<h3>Content<\/h3>\n<p>Text for mobile is written in\u00a0<strong>short, easy to read paragraphs.<\/strong>\u00a0 This helps when it\u2019s stacked for smaller mobile screens.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve also introduced styles like the introduction which helps to focus the point of the content on the web page.\u00a0It\u2019s allowed us to firm up our content standards. A paragraph should be around 20 words because this works better on mobile.<\/p>\n<p>Even though this is part of writing for the web\/writing for mobile, <strong>a lot of our changes are just about good writing<\/strong> generally.<\/p>\n<h2>So, how did we do it?<\/h2>\n<p>By magic of course! Well actually, a <strong>whole lot of design, technical and word wizardry<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>We worked closely with colleagues in our IT Service (NUIT) as well as those in schools, faculties and central services.<\/p>\n<p>We developed a <strong>brand new suite of training<\/strong> for our web editors. This covers editing in the new system, writing for the web, defining site objectives and using media (images and videos). We also introduced various tools to help you evaluate and improve content.<\/p>\n<p>Find out what our <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/tag\/guest-post\/\">web editors thought of the Go Mobile process<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Next steps<\/h2>\n<p>There are exciting times ahead. We\u2019re turning attention to Phase 2. This is where we take the rest of the external website through Go Mobile. We\u2019re planning to do this between January and December 2016.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s going to mean a lot of change for the team:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Agile ways of working<\/li>\n<li>focused, time-bound project cycles to get through all the sites<\/li>\n<li>extra staff<\/li>\n<li>new office space<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It\u2019s going to mean a lot of commitment from our faculties and services. We need staff dedicated to developing their websites working with us and giving time for training on writing best practice and the new content management system.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019d love to hear your comments on what we\u2019re doing. Either comment here or use our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncl.ac.uk\/about\/feedback\/\">feedback form<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our\u00a0Go Mobile\u00a0programme is up and running: 17, yes\u00a017 (!) sites\u00a0went live in September. Phase 1 (our \u2018beta\/test\/is this even possible\u2019 phase) was a success. And because of this, we\u2019re going to carry on and put the rest of our external-facing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/2015\/10\/09\/go-mobile-the-story-so-far\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3934,"featured_media":1156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,21],"tags":[30,31,65,29,66,26],"class_list":["post-1151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-go-mobile","category-what-we-do","tag-cms","tag-content-management-system","tag-mobile","tag-responsive-design","tag-training","tag-writing-for-the-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3934"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1151"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1185,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions\/1185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}