FOWD and the Responsive Web

I went to FOWD last week in London expecting there to be a strong emphasis on mobile. I wasn’t dissapointed. This brain dump is going to begin with the last talk of the two day conference in which Josh Clark debated the pros and cons of ‘native apps’ and the ‘mobile web’. It seems to me that in a lot of cases, a responsive website that can reformat itself for mobile, wins. Here’s why.

Leaving aside apps for gaming and the like that make perfect sense to run natively for obvious reasons, ‘web apps’ are often perfectly capable of offering an acceptable mobile experience. This makes sense when you draw from Ethan Marcotte’s ‘Responsive Web Designer’ talk in which he covered CSS methods, flexible grids and images to provide a single destination that responds to the device the individual is using. To my mind, this seems to make a lot more sense than encouraging people to go out their way and download a dedicated app or even to re-direct them to a seperate “m.” subdomain. It seems that today’s mobile web browsers aren’t being taken seriously (Do I need to mention HTML5 and CSS3? — technologies that give us locative capabilities and more). You can read Ethan’s A List Apart article on the topic here.

The word “App” has become somewhat of a buzzword. The constant bombardment of app-related marketing seems to have ingrained in us an ‘app culture’ since the explosion of Apple’s App Store. Every mobile platform seems to have jumped on the bandwagon, even Chrome as a web app store — but herein lies the problem.

Unless company x provides a great app experience that meets expectations on each individual’s chosen device, they risk leaving a proportion of their audience out in the cold.

I’d hedge a bet and say iOS is targeted most, and as a result I would imagine company x ends up spending their precious money,time and resources on just one platform. What I’m trying to say is: the web is universally accessible. Native apps are not.

If you look to the left you’ll see that Autoglass have gone all out. The image shows mobile optimised website to the left, native iPhone app to the right. The native app provided no more functionality than it’s web counterpart.

This begs the question: Why make both?

I think this can by explained by the notion of how we see our apps: as “show-off-pins”. They act as pin badges — you show off your favourite apps to your friends just as teenagers pin up movie posters on their walls. They’ve become little digital fashion accessories for your phone, often showing allegiances to the brands you care about. This attitude is exacerbated by the aforementioned ‘app culture’ which perpetuates the notion that a) Company x needs to provide a native app experience to meet the status quo. And b) User y shows their dedication to a brand with a app on their phone because their friends do.

Take a look at my quick responsive website here.