As British publisher Guardian News and Media sees an increasing amount of traffic coming from mobile devices, the media company is taking the first steps towards a responsive design site that will render across all handsets.

Traffic from The Guardian?s mobile site and applications make up 30 percent of total traffic, which is a jump from 10 percent at the beginning of 2011. The new site is aimed at creating a more seamless reading experience for readers with handsets.

?Our goal is to create the best possible experience for our audience,? said Anthony Sullivan, group product manager at Guardian News and Media, London.

?In a week, we can see as many as 1,800 different types of mobile handsets accessing our content and the capability difference, screen size and resolution across that range is huge,? he said.  

?It is no longer possible to think about a single output that can do a good enough job across this range.  You would be forced to produce a lowest common denominator product. But the good news is that the technologies that support our responsive approach help us to work towards our goal of an optimized experience.  We can detect the device and therefore screen dimensions and wider device capabilities and adapt to that.?

Optimized news
Readers can access The Guardian?s mobile site at http://www.guardiannews.com/ and http://www.guardian.co.uk. 

The Guardian claims that the new site is a step towards a responsive mobile site that is optimized for smaller tablets and smartphones. Users who access the site with a tablet that is larger than seven inches will be directed to The Guardian?s Web site.

The emphasis on smaller tablets points to how the devices are being used by consumers for content consumption. With this, there is a growing need from publishers to push out mobile content across a variety of differently-sized screens.

The focus of the new site is on simplicity with articles that help users find the content that they are looking for quickly.

For instance, stories on the homepage have a headline, small blurb and image. Additionally, font sizes are bigger, and each article includes a section with recommended articles.

Readers can now also watch videos and browse through photo galleries quickly.

Going forward, The Guardian is looking at adding search and improved comment options to the site.

?Like everyone in the digital publishing space, we are witnessing a fundamental change in audience behavior,? Mr. Sullivan said.

?The proportion of our audience that is consuming The Guardian on mobile and tablet devices is growing very fast, and at certain times of the day and week, more usage is taking place on mobile and tablets than on the desktop. In total terms, we are expecting mobile and tablet usage to exceed the desktop in the not too distant future.?

?The other interesting point is that we are seeing growth in our desktop usage too albeit at a slower rate.  What mobile is doing is expanding news consumption ? it is permeating throughout the day, but particularly in the early morning and late evening, which are not traditional high spots for digital audiences to news content.?

Snack-size news
The Guardian originally launched its mobile site in March 2009 and updated it in November 2010.

According to data from AdobeSiteCatalyst, The Guardian brought in 12.97 million unique users per month and 680,000 unique daily users in October. This is a 63 percent year-over-year increase.

In addition to the mobile Web revamp, The Guardian rolled out an iPad app that mimicked the experience of reading a print newspaper (see story).

?For the Guardian, we believe that mobile Web and mobile apps complement each other,? Mr. Sullivan said.

?The mobile Web site is universally available, which is critical to help us reach new audiences,? he said.

?We also see that our more regular and most-engaged audiences are more likely to install our native iOS and Android apps. We can also take advantage of the native device capabilities to enrich the service more than is possible right now on the Web. This includes notifications, off line storage and greater levels of personalization. Our most engaged users have come to expect this richer proposition.?

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York