You’re Doing It Wrong How App Developers can Leverage the Web
Dan Appelquist Open Web Advocate
twitter.com/torgo
• 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
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
“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
• 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)
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