Forget Mobile First, 2013 Is the Year of Tablet First - SAY Media

Plenty of people have said it before but this time its official 2013 really is the year of the tablet And if you39re in the content business meaning you39re a publisher or marketer this is the year you need to be thinking tablet firstThe newest numbers for tablets tell the story Apple has sold over 100 million iPads to date Amazon Google Microsoft Samsung and others have competitive tablet products in market and tablet traffic grew 300 percent in 2012 In fact tablets will surpass smartphone traffic in early 2013 and will account for 10 percent of all Web traffic in 2014 And this percentage is higher for contentspecific traffic ie reading watching and engaging Despite the fact that only 23 percent of companies design their sites specifically for a tablet and only 33 percent test their sites on tablets consumers are taking to tablets like fish to water These numbers alone should spark CEOs and CMOs to get their teams thinking tablet first when designing new products and marketing campaignsAs impressive as the numbers are the real thing driving this growth is design tablets can deliver wonderful content experiences The Web has changed the world in thousands of ways but print has remained one of the best ways to get truly wonderful editorial experiences thoughtfully laid out magazine covers and article pages large highquality images a human touch when integrating advertising a tactical experience in turning a thick shiny page and yes even By contrast oldschool online content is typically crammed in a box with small pixelated images stuffed unreadably with searchfriendly keywords and surrounded by distracting blinking ads The content seems secondary to the noise that surrounds itIt doesn39t help that desktops and laptops are designed for work usually upright at a desk and smartphones are made for simple onthego communication services and antiboredom light entertainmentTablets are changing all this they39re the ultimate media consumption devices With the critical mass of tablet adoption publishers and marketers are now able to deliver wonderful digital content experiences online First tablets have a form factor that is nearly ideal for readers perfect for bed beach or plane If you haven39t experienced the New York Times39 transcendent story called Snow Fall on a tablet you39re missing one of the coolest new content experiences you can haveThe highres pagesize displays on tablets make viewing high quality video and photos a pleasure And the native touch gestures more human than mouse clicks and more elegant than fumbling thumbs on a phone give us tactile joy I hear my friends say things like how they39re looking forward to quotcurling upquot with their iPad to relax and read the New Yorker Content creators and marketers your quotwowquot experiences need to be hereThe best content producers will refine their mantra to be tablet first Why Smartphone screen sizes are small and when you39re using your phone you have a short attention span You39re focused on consuming information quickly and on the move These constraints mean you need to radically simplify a design On the other hand large screen sizes give you too much real estate and create the illusion that the reader has more time to discover Designers will forget about simplicity and add widgets ads and calls to action because they canTransposing either experience into one holistic deviceagnostic design is difficult and time consuming you are either greatly compromising the original concept or redesigning altogether for specific devicesThe answer is that content producers should be designing for tablet first At Say Media we did this with ReadWrite USA Today Forbes and The Next Web among other informationheavy news sites have also taken tablet first to heart In a tabletfirst design you have enough real estate to deliver rich quality media and create excellent reader experiences and you39re forced to only include the most important parts of telling your story Your design concepts will if done well transfer to the smaller and larger formats better when you start from tablet than if you start from an extreme mobile or desktopReaders are flocking to tablets as the content device of choice And the good news for content creators and advertisers is that these devices allow us to make content truly beautiful and engaging againJohn Vars is director of product management at Say MediaSAY Media is a digital publishing company that creates amazing media brands Through its technology platform and media services SAY enables its portfolio of independent content creators to build passionate communities around key consumer interest areas such as Style Living Food and Tech For more information visit wwwsaymediacomRead all SAY Media39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at SAY DailyCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Forget Mobile First, 2013 Is the Year of Tablet First - SAY Media

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