Adapting Website Design For iPad.
The message is clear – website accessibility is more critical than ever before. Beyond common browser compatibility, eCommerce now needs to consider the ability of their sites to be readily accessed and search friendly for mobile platforms and the avalanche of tablet readers now entering the consumer marketplace.
It’s the year of the mobile app and many savvy companies would have already instructed their website design team to optimise the site pages as best as possible for user friendly mobile search. Not only that, web designers ought to be busy creating mobile apps for their client’s specific market niche, to be downloaded onto iPhone, enabling instant brand access by loyalty audiences at the touch of a stylus!
A website is now so much more than a simple online store. Users expect a rich, informative and entertaining experience. Social media content in the form of blogs, articles, news flashes, Twitter feeds and Facebook interactivity is only the beginning of a redefinition of online marketing presence for forward thinking companies.
Whether you believe that the launch of iPad heralds a real revolution in multi screen size platforms beyond laptop or netbook, may be superseded by the entry of the big global internet players like Dell with Streak, a range of tablet versions in different screen sizes, or Blackberry and HP getting into the act too.
For a brand identity to remain visible and ranking in the onslaught that’s already arrived in realtime search on the move, the question all business must now ask is whether their existing websites are up to the job.
As more tablets become available, and prices reduce, there is certainly a case to be made that a number of business sectors should be adapting their marketing strategies to embrace audience reach via this channel.
On an immediate practical level, website designers need to address a number of usability issues that iPad owners currently face:
Small font sizes: Obviously great for web browsing, but iPad screens are still smaller than most laptops and PCs, so some text can be hard to read, which means that text-heavy pages always require zooming.
Redundant dropdown menus: Inability to hover over links with a mouse means some aspects of websites do not work at all, or else very poorly. Some e-commerce sites operate drop-down menus that only flash up for a fraction of a second, meaning that you cannot use them to find a quicker route to sub-categories or that the links on the drop-down are so small that clicking the one you want can be tricky.
Links too close together : Clicking on links accurately on touchscreen devices can be a problem because they are placed too close together, making it virtually impossible to select the right option.
Flash elements not working: Aside from Apple’s dislike of Flash, sites that rely heavily on Flash are not going to work well on the iPad.
Product photos and videos: Videos or pictures rendered in Flash are often used for product display, and these elements do not work on iPad.
Cluttered / busy websites : The more elements and text you place on a page, the harder it becomes to read and navigate on an iPad.
The above dip into issues of website functionality with the iPad gives some indication of the very real hurdles to be overcome if today’s websites are to get themselves up to speed to deal with the next generation of web technologies.