You're Doing it Wrong – How App Developers Can Leverage the Web (June 2015 for Überall App Congress, Vienna)

You’re Doing It Wrong How App Developers can Leverage the Web

Dan Appelquist Open Web Advocate

twitter.com/torgo

The Web is Mobile

• The Web’s strength is that it is a commons

• The URL is the fundamental glue of the Web

• No one entity controls URLs and they are interoperable across the entire world

• People understand URLs

• What happens when someone visits a URL is under the complete control of the web site owner

Antipatterns

Let’s Talk about Door Slams

Credit: xkcd (xkcd.org/1174)

Image Credit: Terence Eden

Ok - so non-modal? Better but not by much...

Why would you send your customer somewhere else?

• Equivalent of saying to someone who walks into your shop: “go away and buy our stuff at Walmart.”

• Your customer will more than likely be pushed other competing products ... or just get distracted

Even More Mystifying• “download our app” as a call to action on print or TV

advertising?

• You're jamming your message with other brands, creating a confusing and frustrating customer experience

• What if they have a phone you don't support? The message is : f--- you!

• This is 2015 – people know what to do with URLs on their phones and tablets

• Even if you want to send your user to an app, let the Web page be the front door – control the experience

Nissan• Television and print

advertising push "download our app" (IOS and Android only, please)

• What am I supposed to search for? "Nissan?"

• This dumps me on a screen where I could just as likely download a game...

• And their web site looks great on mobile devices (responsive design++)

Star Trek• Clear how to find out more

• Brings you to a responsive web site with relevant actions you can take (last year: buy tickets; this year: buy blu-rays)

• Also, download apps

What is the call to action?

Much better…

…or is it?

“We Want our App to be on the User’s Phone”

• FT and many others use “Save to Homescreen”

• Guide your user through the process of adding the web app to their homescreen

• Thereafter, the web app appears as an app

• Optionally, it can be launched in a “chromeless” view

…but…• Do you really need your app to be on the user’s home

screen?

• How many apps do you have in your app ghetto?

• Users are getting app fatigue

• One-off experiences such as “buy tickets to a movie” don't necessarily need to stick around on the user’s home screen

• How about encouraging users to “favorite” or (gasp) “bookmark” your webapp?

Best practice for Mobile (Web) Apps

• Use the URL - understand that URLs will be passed around out-of-band and build that in to your design thinking

• Get a short domain and export short URLs

• Even if your preferred experience is in an app, offer a Web version of that experience

• If people want to interact with you via the Web, let them!

Sharability / Linkability• How are people experiencing your service / content?

• Your service / content doesn’t live in a vacuum

• Can you enable sharing through the users choice of medium?

• Permalink – “cool URLs don’t change” – Tim Berners-Lee

• Think about short URLs (nyti.ms, bbc.in) – control the experience

• Think about the whole customer journey

• URL is UX

What’s missing from the Web?

From 2010

So what’s changed in 5 years?

• Web on mobile is no longer seen as “a mobile industry thing”

• Major focus in the web ecosystem on responsive design: mobile first

• SEO boost from designing responsively

• New, more powerful features coming to the web platform (location, camera, video, sensors, WebRTC)

• More sharing, more linking, more platforms

–UK Government Data Services (GDS) https://goo.gl/YboLjA

“Standalone mobile apps will only be considered once the core web service works

well on mobile devices…”

Web Innovations

• Manifest (Chrome / Firefox)

• Save to Homescreen (Chome / Firefox)

• Push API (Chrome / Firefox)

• Service Worker (Chrome / Firefox)

• App install directly form web page (Chrome / Firefox)

• Chrome tabs instead of web views (Chrome)

Security Permissions

Privacy

Take-aways

• Don’t slam the door on your users

• Incorporate the web into the user journey

• Have a URL strategy

• Build a responsive site

• Facilitate as much as possible in the browser

• Use the web as a vector for native apps

No apprequired…

Danke!

Dan Appelquist twitter.com/torgo