Web design for the iPhone and Google's Bing effort

11/06/10 posted by Liz Niland

The iPhone, and now iPad, has had a significant influence on the direction of web design and development. While much importance has been placed on creating apps for these devices, it is certainly not the focus your company should hold above all others when looking to target such new markets. Depending on your business and your goals for narrowing-in on the mobile web, there are a handful of web design and development options that can be considered before diving into the deep end of app store regulations.

According to Comscore (via Mashable) more users actually access the mobile website of a company than their app (72 million vs 69 million, April 2010). So while you might think that creating an app will get you out of the problems noted when your Flash-heavy website is displayed on mobile devices, think again. Twitter for example, has a mobile version of its website and has recently released its own official app. Did we download the app? Yes. But do we like it? No - we still use the version that comes up when the URL is plugged into Safari.

Kevin Nakao, COO for WhitePages, has some excellent to-app-or-not-to-app decision-making assistance in his Mashable post today. It does all boil down to business goals though - you need an online strategy included in your greater business objectives. While you make up your mind though, ensure your web design and development is able to be viewed and used on mobile devices - even if you decide on an app, you can’t ignore your primary online presence.

In Google vs Everyone news, the search giant has got itself into a spot of bad press with its latest “test” feature. Nothing works less successfully for a business than blatantly copying the opposition. It always comes across as a cheap imitation, a diluted version of an innovative original.

Copycats are generally bottom-feeders seeking to gain whatever scraps fall through to them, so it makes it seem that bit worse when a company the size of, well, Google, overhauls its user interface to look just like Bing. While we’ve previously mentioned the Bing similarities in the updated search results page, last night’s switch to a Bing-style home page background was Google’s “Only $20! It’s real Chanel, I swear” moment.

Microsoft Europe responded to the change with a cheeky tweet: “We’ve lost a background image, if found please return to bing.com ;)” There comes a time in everyone’s life when they need to realise what their signature style is, and Google has learnt the hard way just how good it looks in white.