Designing for the iPhone
Recently, one of our clients asked us to design a website layout specifically for the iPhone. LevelTen has created one iPhone specific web application in our past, but we have little experience with best practices. This prompted me to research some iPhone web applications and find out what makes a good web app vs. a bad web app. These are my findings:
(The web apps I list below can be viewed on an iPhone, if you have one, but may also be viewed on this iPhone emulator on the web.)
- Simplicity is Key Popurls does a good job of keeping things simple. Popular Now and Popular Today head the list. Upon click, it takes you to a list of headings from news stories. Take another click and it links you to the story. Easy peasy. ScoreMobile also keeps things nice and simple by showing 3 category buttons NBA, MLB and NHL and placing only the date, city, time, and scores on the page. A bad example of keeping things simple can be seen with Casting.mobi. Their homepage is cluttered and busy. I did not know what to do when I first got to the page. I clicked on "Search Talents" and was brought to a ridiculously long page filled with text fields that I'm not sure who would fill out.
- Bigger is Better I noticed that several of what I would consider good apps had large hotspots around links, large buttons, and large text. All of these are easy for the fingers. SmartBytes does a good job by providing big hotspots around its menu items.
- Optimize Call to Actions An important part of an iPhone web app is to include is a call to action for relevant pages. Woman's Day Recipe Finder includes call to actions on all of their recipes. The buttons Save Recipe and Email Recipe are on every recipe page. The only downside is that the call to action buttons are located at the very bottom of the recipe. This means you have to scroll through all of the ingredients, directions, and nutrition facts just to save it or email the recipe to your friend.
- Don't Make the User Login I want to interact with a site right away, and I'm sure most users want to do the same. Sites like 43 actions, who have only a login screen on the home page, leave much to offer. Weight Date Weight Tracker does it a little bit better. It has a login on it's home screen, but allows the user to make a username and password right there. It doesn't require you to click Sign up or any of the sort. Even better is the Foodist Colony, where it has the login on the home page, along with other links to browse restaurants, etc. WebChattr allows the user to create a username and start chatting right away.
