• Read more about Mobomo redesigns and re-launches website for Pandemic Response on Drupal 9 in an incredible 5 weeks

2020 has been a year full of unexpected surprises and challenges. In March, the coronavirus had reached the United States and had begun spreading quickly causing federal and state governments to take action to ensure public safety, including the development and passing of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). As the pandemic spread, many more eyes turned to the government to watch how they were navigating this new unmarked territory. 

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) created PandemicOversight.gov to display the details of the $2.6 trillion coronavirus relief spending provided by the CARES Act. The website allows the public interactive tools for understanding who received coronavirus funding, how much they’ve received, and how the funds are being spent. The website also provides tools for the public to report fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement of coronavirus relief funding, as well as helpful information to protect yourself against fraudulent activity. 

Mobomo was brought in to perform the redesign and development of the website, which had initially launched as pandemic.oversight.gov earlier this year. The Mobomo team was able to do a complete overhaul of the legacy platform and re-launch the system in just over five weeks’ time with the new website having been officially launched to the public on September 10th. Since the launch, the website has received thousands of visitors interested in learning more about who, where, and how coronavirus relief funding is being spent. 

“Transparency in government is critical in these uncertain times and the mission of the PRAC strives to provide that public service. I’m very proud of what our team has developed and hope the website helps people see how relief funding is being distributed.” – Brian Lacey, CEO.

Not Your Average Government Website

The Mobomo team redesigned PandemicOversight.gov with the goal of incorporating modern theming and a clean design that many of your traditional government information sites lack, but did so while incorporating 18F and US Web Design Standards best practices.  Mobomo’s User Experience team worked with the PRAC to develop mobile-first, responsive design templates that mesh the innovative branding and theming with the high-fidelity interactive visualizations that are key to communicating coronavirus funding activity. 

Let’s Get Technical

The legacy pandemic.oversight.gov was developed in Drupal 8 and hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS). For the redesign and re-launch of the site, the Mobomo team decided to rebuild the content management system leveraging the latest version of Drupal 9 and deployed the solution within the Microsoft Azure Websites platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environment. Mobomo developed a number of custom feature integrations with visualization partners Domo and Woolpert, enhanced search indexing for browsing various oversight reports and investigations, and optimized process for users to communicate instances of fraud, waste, and abuse through secure channels. 

In order to meet the tight five-week window for design, development, and deploying the new website – the Mobomo team leveraged containerization and Lando for streamlining local development and hooking into the continuous integration, continuous development (CI/CD) pipeline. Mobomo also worked with the Smartronix Azure Cloud team to architect a zero-downtime deployment procedure to allow seamless promotion of new code the public environment. 

“This is a great team on both sides of the table. For such an expedited delivery schedule, it is critical for all the contract partners and government stakeholders to stay Agile and collaborate effectively to succeed.” – Austin White, VP of Federal Services.

For more information on Mobomo’s work with the Federal Government click here.

About the PRAC

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) was established by the CARES Act as part of the committee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE). The PRAC has developed a Strategic Plan for the next five years that details how PRAC will serve the public by promoting transparency of funds and by preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement of said funds. The committee will work closely with the Federal Inspectors General to support all affected by the pandemic. 

Our Partners
Pandemic Response and Accountability Committee (PRAC)
Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE)
Smartronix
Domo
Woolpert
Grant Thornton

• Read more about #23 Top-Performing Small Technology Company

Mobomo, LLC Ranked #23 in the 8/28/2020 issue Washington Business Journal’s Top-Performing Small Technology Companies

The Washington Business Journal has released a ranked list of the Top-Performing Small Technology Companies in the greater D.C. area in its in the 8/28/2020 issue. To evaluate these companies, the Journal reviewed revenue from 2019, and only companies with fewer than 150 total employees headquartered in the DMV region could qualify. Mobomo, LLC was proud to be seated as the 23rd top-performing company. 

This placement shows not only the tremendous growth of our organization but also the well-deserved accomplishments of all members of our small team. To reflect on some specific achievements in 2019 that lead to our successes.

"Mobomo is excited to be recognized and listed amongst this impressive group of DC area businesses," said Brian Lacey, CEO. "Our team's dedication to innovation and client satisfaction continues to drive our year over year growth." 

The full list of companies included can be found here: https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/subscriber-only/2020/08/28/top-performing-small-technology.html

About the Washington Business Journal:

The Washington Business Journal is the leading source for business news and data for the Washington, D.C., region. The Business Journal publishes all the information and insights you need to succeed in business — through the weekly edition, website, email products, and our events and awards programs. Owned by the parent company, American City Business Journals – The Business Journals brands are recognized on the local level in 43 markets and have 400+ journalists entrenched in their local markets and industries.

• Read more about For the 8th Time In Row, Mobomo LLC Appears on the Inc. 5000 List!

Inc. magazine today revealed that Mobomo LLC is No. 4742 on its annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economy’s most dynamic segment—its independent small businesses. 

“This is all about our awesome team,” said Mobomo CEO, Brian Lacey. “You can't make it on the Inc 5000 list 8 years in a row without an elite team of designers, developers, operations engineers, and managers leading the way and that is exactly what we have here at Mobomo. Congrats and thank you to all of Team Mobomo, both past and present, that have been a part of this accomplishment.” 

Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at www.inc.com/inc5000.

More about Inc. and the Inc. 5000

Methodology

The 2020 Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2016 and 2019. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2016. They had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2019. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2016 is $100,000; the minimum for 2019 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.’s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

About Inc. Media

The world’s most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

For more information on the Inc. 5000 Conference, visit http://conference.inc.com/.

• Read more about Mobomo Earns its Second 1st Place at PRNews Digital Award with Maximus

The PRNews Digital Awards program recognizes the most innovative and industry-altering digital communicators and campaigns. This year, the Maximus New York State of Health (NYSOH) Mobile Upload app received first place in the Mobile App category. Mobomo has been a partner to Maximus for product design and development for the last three years and now have won back-to-back PRNews awards – also winning the 2019 PRNEWS Digital Award for the Healthy Louisiana Mobile App.

ABOUT THE APP

In partnership with Mobomo, Maximus launched the NYSOH Mobile Upload app in October 2019 which streamlines the health insurance program eligibility process, significantly reduces intake and processing time and enables New Yorkers to access insurance benefits sooner. The app allows New Yorkers to take pictures of and securely upload the required documentation needed to finalize their health insurance program eligibility determination. The functionality of the app helps consumers identify the documents they must submit by choosing from a list, capture the best possible photo by using edge detection and auto capture functionality and securely upload personal information.

Prior to the NYSOH Mobile Upload app, consumers who were applying for insurance coverage through the NYSOH Marketplace needed to submit supporting documentation by mail, fax, or computer upload. The process was time-consuming, inconvenient and caused delays in beneficiaries receiving insurance coverage. By eliminating the need documents through the mail, and instead, consumers can send documents directly into a secure system, with greater confidence that their information is being handled appropriately. The new app now allows faster access to the most vital health insurance programs.

NYSOH Mobile Upload has seen incredible user adoption success. In the first 90 days after the app launch, submissions via NYSOH Mobile Upload surpassed fax to become the second leading channel for document submissions to Maximus, and in April 2020 the app surpassed mail submissions to become the leading channel for consumers to upload relevant materials. In addition, the NYSOH Mobile Upload App currently has a 4.8 out of 5 rating on the iOS and Google Play app stores.

Prior to NYSOH Mobile Upload, consumers applying for insurance coverage through the New York State of Health Marketplace needed to submit supporting documentation by mail, fax, or computer upload. The process was time consuming and often caused unnecessary delays in consumers receiving insurance coverage. By eliminating the need for submitting documents through the mail, consumers can now send documents directly into a secure system, with greater confidence that their information is being handled appropriately. The new app now allows faster access to the most vital health insurance programs.

“Maximus continues to be recognized as a digital innovator in supporting our state clients’ efforts to improve the customer journey when applying and accessing state benefits programs,” said Bruce Caswell, President and CEO of Maximus. “This award puts a spotlight on the real achievement of building technology that enhances the consumer experience and helps ensure Medicaid beneficiaries receive vital health coverage efficiently and expeditiously.”

ABOUT MOBOMO

Mobomo is a world-class developer of high-performance applications and websites which we carefully craft to fit the needs of government agencies. We work hand-in-hand with our clients to deliver mobile, web, and cloud solutions using advanced DevOps techniques, which we integrate with our proven Agile software development methodology. For more information, visit mobomo.com.

To reach out with any media or partnership questions, please contact Ryan McNey.

• Read more about Drupal vs WordPress: Which is Better for Your Business?

Like many developers, some of our first websites were built on the backbones of WordPress. It's the hyper-popular king of content management systems. It has name recognition, an overflowing user base, and plenty of third-party integrations that help cut your development time. But, over the years, we've migrated almost exclusively to Drupal. So why did we switch? What is it about Drupal that leaves developers drooling? And why would anyone pick Drupal — which has around 1.3 million users — over WordPress —which has over 400 million users? Today, we're going to compare David to Goliath. Why is Drupal, the third most active CMS behind WordPress and Joomla, a good choice for businesses looking to build a refreshing, impactful, and feature-rich website?

UNDERSTANDING THE CORE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DRUPAL AND WORDPRESS

By far, the most significant difference between WordPress and Drupal is the overall development need. WordPress is simple. There are hundreds of thousands of third-party plugins that you can leverage to build an entire website with virtually no coding or developing knowledge. And, that's the single biggest reason that WordPress is so massive. Anyone can build a WordPress site. It's easy. Drupal requires development. If you want to build a Drupal website, you're going to have to hire some developers. So, naturally, Drupal has fewer overall users. But, it's essential to make that distinction. Drupal is built for businesses, public entities, and enterprises. WordPress is built for your everyday website. It's important to keep this main difference in mind. It's this difference that resonates throughout these core pillars. And, it's this core difference that creates pros and cons for each platform.

DRUPAL VS. WORDPRESS: SECURITY, FLEXIBILITY, AND SCALABILITY

We consider security, flexibility, and scalability to be the three primary pillars of a CMS. An amazing designer can make a fantastic template or theme regardless of the CMS. And ease-of-use is relative to your plugins/modules, familiarity with the platform, and overall development capabilities. So those are both highly subjective. Security, flexibility, and scalability aren't subjective; they are what they are.

SECURITY

WordPress has a security problem. Alone, WordPress accounts for 90% of all hacked websites that use a CMS. There's a tradeoff that comes with leveraging third-party plugins to build websites. You increase your threat landscape. WPScan Vulnerability Database shows 21,675 vulnerabilities in WordPress's core and with third-party plugins. This security vulnerability issue has been an ongoing headache for WordPress from the start. If we do a play-by-play, year-over-year of WordPress's history, we see an ongoing and consistent security issue:

• 2013: 70% of the top 40,000 most popular WordPress websites were vulnerable to hackers
• 2014: SoakSoak compromises +100,000 websites, a massive DDOS attack hits 160,000 websites, and All In One SEO Pack puts +19 million sites at risk.
• 2015: A core vulnerability puts millions of websites at risk, Akismet opens millions of websites to hackers, and YoastSEO puts over 14 million websites in hackers' crosshairs.
• 2016: At this point, millions of hacks are happening every week across plugins. Check out this WordFence weekly update during this period.
• 2017: The hacks continue. The average small business website using WordPress is attacked 44 times a day at this point, and WordPress websites are 2x more likely to be hacked than other CMS.

The list goes on. Year-over-year, more vulnerabilities happen across WordPress. And this is an important point. WordPress has subpar security by design. It's the tradeoff they made to build an ecosystem that doesn't require development. We aren't saying that the core of WordPress is inherently security-stripped. It's not. But, given the scale, scope, and third-party-fanatic nature of the platform, it's weak on security by nature. Drupal, on the other hand, is the opposite. Websites require development time, each website is customized to the user, and building a website takes time and patience. The tradeoff is better security. Drupal has built-in enterprise-scale security, and you don't rely on a hotchpotch of third-party applications to build your website's functionality. There's a reason that NASA, the White House, and other government entities use (or used) Drupal. It has better security. We want to take a second to make the distinction. WordPress has a secure core. We would argue that Drupal has a more secure core. But the difference isn't massive. WordPress's security vulnerabilities are a product of its reliance on third-party applications to make a functional website.

FLEXIBILITY

WordPress is more flexible than Drupal to some users. And Drupal is more flexible than WordPress to some users. That may sound complicated. But it comes down to your development capabilities. Drupal has more features than WordPress. Its core is filled with rich taxonomies, content blocks, and unique blocks than WordPress. But, if you aren't experienced, you probably won't find and/or use many of these functionalities. On the surface, WordPress has more accessible features. At the core, Drupal is the single most feature-rich CMS on the planet. So, for businesses (especially public entities and larger enterprises), Drupal has a more robust architecture to tackle large-scale projects that have hyper-specific needs. For small businesses and personal website owners, WordPress is easier to use and requires far less development experience to tap into its functionalities, features, and flexibility.

SCALABILITY

Drupal has better scalability. This one isn't a competition. Again, this comes down to the dev-heavy nature of the platform. To scale WordPress websites, you add more plugins. To scale Drupal websites, you develop more. There's a key practical difference here. Drupal modules, taxonomies, and content blocks all exist in the same ecosystem. Each WordPress plugin is its own micro-ecosystem. So, with WordPress, most users are stringing together a ton of third-party ecosystems in an attempt to create one overarching website. Also, Drupal is built for enterprise-scale projects. So there's backend support and a large landscape of community support around large-scale projects. WordPress is a catch-all CMS that has a little of everything. If WordPress is a Swiss army knife, Drupal is a custom, hand-forged bread knife — explicitly designed to help you scale, slice, and butter larger projects.

ARE YOU READY TO DEVELOP YOUR PERFECT DRUPAL WEBSITE?

At Mobomo, we specialize in Drupal development projects. Our agile-based team of top-level design, development, and support talent can help you launch and scale your website to fit your unique needs. From NASA to Great Minds, we help private and public entities build dreams and execute visions.

Contact us to learn more.

• Read more about Must-Follow Considerations When Starting a Drupal-Based Project

Over 500,000 businesses leverage Drupal to launch their websites and projects. From NASA to Tesla, public and private institutions regularly rely on Drupal to launch large-scale websites capable of handling their development and visual needs. But, starting a Drupal project doesn't guarantee success. In fact, 14% of all IT projects outright fail, 43% exceed their initial budgets, and 31% fail to meet their original goals! In other words, if you want to create a successful Drupal project, you need to prepare. Don't worry! We've got your back. Here are 5 things to keep in mind when starting a Drupal-based project.

1. GATHER REQUIREMENTS FROM STAKEHOLDERS EARLY AND OFTEN

According to PMI, 39% of projects fail due to inadequate requirements. Believe it or not, requirement gathering is the single most important stage of project development. In fact, it's the first step Drupal itself takes when pushing out new projects (see this scope document for their technical document project). Gathering requirements may sound easy, but it can be a time-consuming process. We recommend using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed Upon, Realistic, Time-based) to map out your specific needs. If possible, involve the end-user during this stage. Don't assume you know what users want; ask them directly. Internally, requirements gathering should rally nearly every stakeholder with hefty amounts of cross-collaboration between departments. You want to lean heavily on data, establish your benchmarks and KPIs early, and try to involve everyone regularly. The single biggest project mistake is acting like requirements are set-in-stone. If you just follow the initial requirements to a "T," you may push out a poor project. You want to regularly ask questions, communicate issues, and rely on guidance from stakeholders and subject matter experts (SMEs) to guide your project to completion.

2. PLAN YOUR SDLC/WORKFLOW PIPELINE

We all have different development strategies. You may leverage freelancers, a best-in-class agency, or internal devs to execute your Drupal projects. Typically, we see a combination of two of the above. Either way, you have to set some software development lifecycle and workflow standards. This gets complex. On the surface, you should think about coding standards, code flow, databases, and repositories, and all of the other development needs that should be in sync across devs. But there's also the deeper, more holistic components to consider. Are you going to use agile? Do you have a DevOps strategy? Are you SCRUM-based? Do you practice design and dev sprints? At Mobomo, we use an agile-hybrid development cycle to fail early, iterate regularly, and deploy rapidly. But that's how we do things. You need to figure out how you want to execute your project. We've seen successful Drupal projects using virtually every workflow system out there. The way you work matters, sure. But getting everyone aligned under a specific way of working is more important. You can use the "old-school" waterfall methodology and still push out great projects. However, to do that, you need everyone on the same page.

3. USE SHIFT-LEFT TESTING FOR BUG AND VULNERABILITY DETECTION

Drupal is a secure platform. Of the four most popular content management systems, Drupal is the least hacked. But that doesn't mean it’s impenetrable. You want to shift-left test (i.e., automate testing early and often in the development cycle). Drupal 8+ has PHPUnit built-in — taking the place of SimpleTest. You can use this to quickly test out code. You can perform unit tests, kernel tests, and functional tests with and without JavaScript. You can also use Nightwatch.js to run tests. Of course, you may opt for third-party automation solutions (e.g., RUM, synthetic user monitoring, etc.) The important thing is that you test continuously. There are three primary reasons that shift-left testing needs to be part of your development arsenal.

• It helps prevent vulnerabilities. The average cost of a data breach is over $3 million. And it takes around 300 days to identify and contain website breaches.
• It bolsters the user experience. A 100-millisecond delay in page load speed drops conversions by 7%. Meanwhile, 75% of users judge your credibility by your website's design and performance, and 39% of users will stop engaging with your website if your images take too long to load. In other words, simple glitches can result in massive issues.
• It reduces development headaches. Nothing is worse than developing out completely new features only to discover an error that takes you back to step 1.

4. GET HYPER-FAMILIAR WITH DRUPAL'S API

If you want to build amazing Drupal projects, you need to familiarize yourself with the Drupal REST API. This may sound like obvious advice. But understanding how Drupal's built-in features, architecture, and coding flow can help you minimize mistakes and maximize your time-to-launch. The last thing you want to do is code redundantly when Drupal may automate some of that coding on its end. For more information on Drupal's API and taxonomy, see Drupal API. We know! If you're using Drupal, you probably have a decent idea of what its API looks like. But make sure that you understand all of its core features to avoid headaches and redundancies.

5. SET STANDARDS

Every development project needs standards. There are a million ways to build a website or app. But you can't use all of those million ways together. You don't want half of your team using Drupal's built-in content builder and the other half using Gutenberg. Everyone should be on the same page. This goes for blocks, taxonomy, and every other coding need and task you're going to accomplish. You need coding standards, software standards, and process standards to align your team to a specific framework. You can develop standards incrementally, but they should be shared consistently across teams. Ideally, you'll build a standard for everything. From communication to development, testing, launching, and patching, you should have set-in-stone processes. In the past, this was less of an issue. But, with every developer rushing to agile, sprint-driven methodologies, it can be easy to lose sight of standards in favor of speed. Don't let that happen. Agile doesn't mean "willy-nilly" coding and development for the fastest possible launch. It still has to be systematic. Standards allow you to execute faster and smarter across your development pipeline.

NEED SOME HELP?

At Mobomo, we build best-in-class Drupal projects for brands across the globe. From NASA to UGS, we've helped private, and public entities launch safe, secure, and exciting Drupal solutions. Are you looking for a partner with fresh strategies and best-of-breed agile-driven development practices?

Contact us. Let's build your dream project — together.

• Read more about Drupal Migration Preparation Audit

DRUPAL MIGRATION PREPARATION AUDIT

All good things must come to an end. Drupal 7 will soon meet its end. Does your organization have your migration plan to Drupal 9 in order? Here’s what you need to know to keep your Drupal site running and supported. Talk to Our Drupal Migration Experts Now!

OUR APPROUCH TO DRUPAL MIGRATION.

• Analyze 
• Inventory
• Migration
• Revision
• SEO

OVERVIEW

Staying up to date with Drupal versions is vital to maintaining performance to your site:

• Future-proofing
• Avoiding the end-of-life cut-off
• Performance
• Security

GOALS

1. Catalog existing community contributed modules necessary to the project

• Do these modules have a corresponding Drupal 8 version?
• If the answer to the above question is no, is there an alternative?
• Is there an opportunity to optimize or upgrade the site’s usage of contributed modules?

2. Catalog existing custom built modules

• Do these modules rely on community contributed modules that may not have a migration path to Drupal 8?
• Do these modules contain deprecated function calls?
• Are there any newer community contributed modules that may replace the functionality of the custom modules?

3. Review existing content models.

• How complex is the content currently—field, taxonomy, media?
• What specific integrations need to be researched so content will have feature parity?

4. Catalog and examine 3rd party integrations.

• Is there any kind of e-commerce involved?
• Do these 3rd party integrations have any Drupal 8 community modules?

5. Catalog User roles and permissions

• Do user accounts use any type of SSO?
• Is there an opportunity to update permissions and clean up roles?

PRE-AUDIT REQUIREMENTS

• Access to the codebase

• Access to the database

• Access to a live environment (optional)

• Access to integrations in order to evaluate level of effort

DELIVERABLES

Module Report The module report should contain an outline of the existing Drupal 7 modules with the corresponding path to Drupal 8, whether that’s an upgraded version of the existing module or a similar module. This report should also contain a sheet outlining any deprecated function usage for the custom modules that will need to be ported to Drupal 8.

Content Model Report The Content Model report should contain an overview of the existing site’s content types, users, roles, permissions and taxonomic vocabularies with each field given special consideration. Recommendations should be made in the report to improve the model when migrating to Drupal 8.

Integration Report The integration report contains a catalog of the third party integrations currently in use and marks those with an existing contributed module from the community and those that will require custom work to integrate with the Drupal 8 system.

Our Insights on Drupal Our latest thoughts, musings and successes.

Contact us. We'll help you expand your reach.

• Read more about Mobomo Announces Membership with Digital Services Coalition

Vienna, VA - July 13th - Mobomo is thrilled to announce its membership into the Digital Services Coalition (DSC). As a digital services agency, we strive to stay at the forefront when it comes to efficient, innovative technology services. This partnership is a perfect fit with our mission, and we are excited to make an impact in the digital world together.

The Digital Services Coalition is redefining how the government does digital. We are honored to join this community to bring innovation and agility to the commercial digital services provided to the government. The digital transformation that the DSC strives to push forward directly aligns with our company vision for the future in the digital services space.

The Coalition is made up of small-sized and mid-tier businesses that perform digital services work and align with DSC values. The pillars that this community is built on are education, advocacy, partnership, and impact. The design and development firms that make up this community strive to educate the civic tech ecosystem on best practices in digital services, promote policies that remove barriers to innovation in government, cultivate enduring relationships with government partners, and make a meaningful difference in the daily lives of users through improved interactions with government.

We, like the DSC, are laser-focused on the long game of changing government through digital transformation and proven innovative solutions.

About Mobomo

Mobomo is a world-class developer of high-performance applications and websites which we carefully craft to fit the needs of government agencies. We work hand-in-hand with our clients to deliver mobile, web, and cloud solutions using advanced DevOps techniques, which we integrate with our proven agile software development methodology.

About DSC 

The Digital Services Coalition is comprised of companies from across the United States that are equally determined to enhance the world of digital services. The DSC is a collection of agile technology and design firms that strive to provide innovative solutions while serving the government.

Contact us. We'll help you expand your reach.

• Read more about How to Choose the Right Drupal Theme

When you first sit down to create your Drupal website, you have plenty of decisions to make. What are your first blog posts going to be? What kinds of marketing materials do you need to help your website convert? What is your SEO strategy to boost your SERP position? These are all important, and we highly recommend that you consider each point before you launch your first website.

But those are details. The most significant decision you're going to make is what theme you'll use. Think of your theme as the building block of your website. It's how users are going to perceive your site, interpret your content, and engage with your products or services. You want a beautiful, interactive, intuitive, and easy-to-browse website that pushes customers to think, engage, and consume your rich creatives.

Here's the problem: there are thousands of Drupal themes. When you first look through the avalanche of bright colors, minimal panes, and unique content configurations, it can be dizzying. How do you pick a theme with that certain something that sets you apart? 

Here are some criteria to help you sift through the tsunami of designs on the market.

How Important is Your Drupal Theme, Really?

At some point, you need to pull the trigger. But how soon should you go with your gut instinct? After all, is picking the "perfect" theme really that important? In today's hyper-redundant theme ecosystem, it's easy to think that website design is a secondary factor in your website build process. Many websites today have eerily similar themes, and you may be looking to copy-paste that minimalist, white-space-heavy style that your competitors probably use.

Don't make the mistake of minimizing the importance of the theme. Your competitors may use cookie-cutter themes, but you shouldn't. Here's why:

In other words, your customers are going to judge the efficacy of your brand based on your website's design. Remember the phrase, "first impressions are everything." Well, 94% of first impressions are based on design—you want something stunning. Obviously, design is still a highly personal experience. Some people like quirky and weird, some like minimal and smooth, and others like aggressive and animation heavy. It depends on your end user and who you are as a brand.

So how do you go about picking the right one? After all, there's a lot at stake. Your theme is going to be the first thing customers see when they click on your website. Here are the three core components of website themes you should consider before you make your choice.

1. Your Brand's Identity

We all know that branding is a big deal. 89% of marketers say that branding is their top goal, and branding is the first thing that 89% of investors look at when deciding whether or not to open their wallets. So, when it comes to your design, brand should be front-of-mind. Who is your company? What does it stand for? And, most all, what does it look like?

Your Drupal theme is a powerful branding tool. Every single component of your website is an opportunity for branding. We could get overly complicated diving into website branding, but we'll stick with the simple stuff. Let's talk about color. Seems simple enough, right? Check this out:

Ok! So color is obviously important. But what about all the other "stuff" on your website? Does the position of content boxes, navigation menu, and blog posts really matter? You bet! Consistent brand representation across content boosts bottom-line profits by 33% on average. And 80% of people think content is what drives them to really engage and build loyalty with brands.

In a nutshell, think about branding when you look at themes. 90% of users expect you to have consistent branding across all channels. If you can't find a theme that screams, "you," that's ok! If you can't find one, build one.

2. Performance

The theme you choose will have a direct impact on your website's performance. Unnecessary components, visual clutter, and poor frontend coding can all increase load times and disrupt website accessibility. Obviously, some of your performance capabilities happen on the backend (e.g., caching, DB Query optimization, MySQL settings, etc.) But your theme still has a sizable effect on how your website performs.

Overly large CSS files, redundant coding for modules, blank spaces, and other issues can all increase time-to-load, create visual issues, and create stop-points for your users. To be clear, performance is a significant component in both lead generation and retention:

Always test out themes for performance. The aesthetic qualities of a website are important, but performance is a necessity.

3. UX

We like to call UX the "hidden performance." It's how your users will engage with and consume content throughout your website. The theme you pick will dictate a significant portion of your UX. Before you choose a theme, build out your information architecture strategy, create mockups for UI (or at least find UI examples that you enjoy), and plot out your broad content strategy. Then, choose a theme that compliments your strategy and information architecture.

Here's the most important thing: always evolve your UX. Consider applying agile to your theme building and choosing practices. Even after you select the right theme, constantly make improvements to your UI/UX to breed consistency and customer-centricity. You can purchase a pre-made theme on the Drupal marketplace, but you still need to customize the theme to fit your brand and conform to your UX framework. You don't want to choose a cookie-cutter theme on the marketplace and fail to maximize its value. Not only will your website look nearly identical to thousands of other Drupal sites, but you also won't truly build an experience-driven website. Give your customers home-cooked steak and potatoes—not a microwaved frozen dinner.

Are You Looking for the Perfect Drupal Theme?

If you want a theme that's hyper-branded, built for performance, and created using brand-specific information architecture, you won't find it on a pre-built theme website. You need to create it. At Mobomo, we help public and private entities create breathtaking Drupal themes specifically for their brand and their users. Let's build your brand something amazing.

Contact us to learn more.

• Read more about How Drupal manages Accessibility

Businesses and governments build websites for one reason: to provide value to their users. But what if your website was incapable of reaching millions of your users? 25% of Americans live with disabilities. For some of them, the simple act of navigating websites, digesting information, and understanding your content is difficult. Yet, despite brands increasing spending on web design and digital marketing, less than 10% of websites actually follow accessibility standards. Businesses are spending significant money to capture an audience, yet they're not ensuring that their audience can engage with their website.

It's a problem—a big one.

You don't want to exclude customers. It's bad for business, and it's bad for your brand. Better yet, accessibility features help improve your SEO, reduce your website complexity, and increase your ability to connect with your loyal audience. But accessibility standards aren't always baked into the architecture of websites.

Luckily, there are some content management systems (CMS) that let you create hyper-accessible websites without even trying. Drupal comes equipped with a variety of accessibility features — each of which helps make your website more accessible for your customers.

Understanding the Importance of Website Accessibility

Creating an accessible website may sound vague, but there's already a worldwide standard you can follow. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) — which is maintained by The World Wide Web Consortium — is the global standard for web accessibility used by companies, governments, and merchants across the world.

Sure! Following the WCAG standard helps you reach a wider audience. But it also keeps you out of legal hot water. Not only has the ADA made it abundantly clear that compliance requires website accessibility. A United States District Court in Florida ruled that WCAG standards are the de facto standards of web accessibility. And there are already cases of businesses getting sued for failing to adhere to them.

The list goes on. Adhering to WCAG web accessibility standards helps protect your brand against litigation. But, more importantly, it opens doors to millions of customers who need accessibility to navigate and engage with your amazing content.

One-third of individuals over the age of 65 have hearing loss. Around 15% of Americans struggle with vision loss. And millions have issues with mobility. The CDC lists six forms of disability:

Web accessibility touches all of those types of disabilities. For those with trouble seeing, screen readers help them comprehend websites. But, screen readers strip away the CSS layer. Your core content has to be accessible for them to be able to comprehend it. Those with mobility issues may need to use keyboard shortcuts to help them navigate your website. Hearing-impaired individuals may require subtitles and captions. Those with cognitive issues may need your website to be built with focusable elements and good contrasting.

There are many disabilities. WCAG creates a unified guideline that helps government entities and businesses build websites that are hyper-accessible to people with a wide range of these disabilities.

Drupal is WCAG-compliant

WCAG is vast. A great starting point is the Accessibility Principles document. But, creating an accessible website doesn't have to be a time-consuming and expensive process. Drupal has an entire team dedicated to ensuring that their platform is WCAG compliant. In fact, Drupal is both WCAG 2.0 compliant and Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG 2.0) compliant. The latter deals with the tools developers use to build websites. So, Drupal has accessibility compliance on both ends.

What Accessibility Features Does Drupal Have?

Drupal's accessibility compliance comes in two forms:

Drupal's Built-in Compliance Features

Drupal 7+ comes native with semantic markup. To keep things simple, semantic markup helps clarify the context of content. At Mobomo, we employ some of the best designers and website developers on the planet. So, we could make bad HTML markup nearly invisible to the average user with rich CSS and superb visuals. But when people use screen readers or other assistive technology, that CSS goes out-of-the-window. They're looking at the core HTML markup. And if it's not semantic, they may have a difficult time navigating it. With Drupal, markup is automatically semantic — which breeds comprehension for translation engines, search engines, and screen readers.

Drupal's accessibility page also notes some core changes made to increase accessibility. These include things such as color contrasting. WCAG requires that color contrasting be at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 7:1 for enhanced contrast. Drupal complies with those guidelines. Many other changes are on the developer side, such as drag and drop functions and automated navigation buttons.

Of course, Drupal also provides developer handbooks, theming guides, and instructional PDFs for developers. Some of the accessibility is done on the developer's end, so it's important to work with a developer who leverages accessibility during their design process.

Drupal's Support for the Accessibility Community

In addition to following WCAG guidelines, Drupal supports community-driven modules that add additional accessibility support. Here are a few examples of Drupal modules that focus on accessibility:

There are hundreds. The main thing to remember is that Drupal supports both back-end, front-end, and community-driven accessibility. And they've committed to continuously improving their accessibility capabilities over time. Drupal's most recent update — the heavily anticipated Drupal 9 — carries on this tradition. Drupal has even announced that Drupal 10 will continue to expand upon accessibility.

Do You Want to Build an Accessible Website

Drupal is on the cutting-edge of CMS accessibility. But they can't make you accessible alone. You need to build your website from the ground up to comply with accessibility. A good chunk of the responsibility is in the hands of your developer. Are you looking to build a robust, functional, beautiful, and accessible website? 

Contact us. We'll help you expand your reach.