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