The seductive iPad2

OK we’ve crossed to the dark side and invested in some Apple kit. Just a small dabble admittedly, a “bottom of the range” iPad, but nonetheless Apple. You have to hand it to them even the packaging is seductive and as for the iPad with its sleek case, shiny screen and cute little icons that will wobble and dance in harmony given the right cue, it is truly an item of desire.

Like many developers we have been caught in the crossfire between Adobe and Apple and have bought our iPad for testing purposes, a story I am sticking to even under duress. So having carefully unwrapped it and carefully preserved the packaging for posterity we opened up Safari and navigated across to a test site to be greeted with a broken Flowplayer jQuery playlist, despite the addition of the iPad compatibility JavaScript plugin. A smug moment in terms of justifying the purchase but a short lived moment of elation against the time fixing the problem. (For anybody who want to know use the Horizontal Scrollable Playlist). It’s all very well for Apple to get up on their high horse about using Flash, but as a storage and playback medium for movie files “it ain’t that bad” and the hassle and cost now being absorbed by smaller businesses as they are forced to update their website is absolutely unjustified.

You can take a view on whether it’s really worth bothering or even if you should ignore Apple as a matter of principal. A quick search on line reports around 5% as a national average for iDevice traffic, but that doesn’t account for how that splits down by category. Up here in Norfolk some businesses are going to lose out more than others if their websites don’t look right in Apple or other mobile devices, Pubs and restaurants are prime examples where visitors will browse from the comfort of their holiday cottage before venturing out.

Regardless of the politics and whether we like it or not the seductiveness of the iPad and the launch of iPhone4S means more and more web browsing will be performed from mobile devices and if your website isn’t compatible you will lose traffic. Unfortunately its not always simply a question as to whether the site contains Flash.Some older sites particularly may simply not render correctly and the content can look jumbled. So beg, borrow or event treat yourself to an iPhone or iPad and check out your own website. Oh and if you borrowed it, don’t forget to return it….

In the last 10 years the internet has gone from being a novelty to a necessity, and so has the need to have a website for your business. A website is much more than a simple page that informs and advertises your products or services, it is a representation of the business itself – its identity online. When marketing yourself online first impressions are everything, studies have even shown that a user will make up his/her mind whether to stay on a website, or leave, in just a fraction of a second.^[1]

This puts emphasis on the importance of having an intuitive, clean and stylish design for your website. Some of the biggest mistakes small businesses make are overwhelming their customers with information. When faced with a large wall off text, a customer who is only looking for the key facts will tend to click the back button rather than sifting through it for the information they require. As the saying goes “content is king” – your content needs to be concise, to the point, easily findable and easily navigable.

There is a lot more to a good design than just textual content though, a designer has many careful considerations to make. Typography, Colour Scheme, Layout – all these points need to be balanced to produce a design that is not only eye catching but informative. Your content needs to be positioned in a way in which the eye would naturally follow, allowing for information to flow to the end user. Fonts need to be given great consideration, as the style of a Typeface can greatly effect the overall design of a website. Imagine a website for a corporate company written in Comic Sans, it seems somewhat unimaginable that a large company could make such a mistake but, believe me, it happens. Colours are a point that a designer will spend much time considering as they convey much more than a simple look, we call this colour theory and it plays a large part in a business’ identity. Colours can calm a user, convey a message or even compel a user to spend their hard earned money on your product – colours are important.

So remember, your website’s image is important. Keep it clean, current and concise.

Sources:
^[1] BBC News