Ever since Apple launched the iPhone app store, the company has been pushing its apps to get all of the attention. But when was the last time you read a review about a new mobile website? Thousands of apps and billions of downloads consistently steal the headlines, while the mobile web is largely ignored by everyone but the consumer. Yet, despite what the marketing would lead you to believe, consumers use the mobile web just as much as apps.
At my company, we raced down the same road, putting pedal to the metal on our apps while leaving our mobile website on cruise control. Our iPhone app has been a Top 10 iPhone reference application for almost two years with almost six million downloads, and even with all of the great chart positions and visibility – just as many iPhone consumers use our mobile website as the application. We are not alone; Comscore reported in April that 72 million mobile users accessed a website compared to 69 million users who used an application. Both are showing more than 25% year-to-year growth.

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Mobile Web Gets Better

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When the app store first launched, only apps could use and access the device’s location. Last July, Apple launched OS 3.0 which provided Safari with GPS/location functionality. Apple’s HTML5 agenda continues to advance the mobile web browsing experience with video, audio, and a limited amount of caching or offline storage of data. The lines between apps and mobile web are blurring and converging.
Here’s a quick comparison of capabilities offered by applications and the mobile web:

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But Apps Make Money

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Apps make more money because iTunes makes it easier for consumers to pay. Similar to Amazon’s one-click check-out, iTunes is a virtual wallet used by 125 million consumers. But a mobile website can’t integrate with iTunes billing — you need an app for that: We tested a premium offer via our iPhone app which achieved a 50% higher conversion rate than the same offer on the mobile web.

However, for advertising revenue, the rates we receive on the mobile web are similar to in-app advertising. In terms of performance, a study on the mobile web versus app for a major travel advertiser showed the mobile web out-performing advertising on the application. Apple does place restrictions on in-app advertising and has the right to block out ad networks they deem competitive. There are no such restrictions on the mobile web.

So which should you choose for your business: A mobile web site, or a mobile application?

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Why the Mobile Web Makes Sense

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Even if an app is still the right choice for you, consider building a mobile website first since it will allow you to build and refine a great consumer experience, optimizing touch screen navigation. Mobile search provider Taptu has highlighted the importance of this through its listings of “touch-friendly” mobile sites.

Another benefit of the mobile web is that you can write once to be read everywhere. With the mobile web, you can reach more devices with a single development effort. Unfortunately, mobile app platforms are fragmented, meaning you have to build specific apps for iPhone, Android, RIM, and Palm Pre. A mobile website can be built to standards that works on all these devices. There are also some fairly easy implementations that allow you to manage device profiles and optimize for different screen sizes.

One of the most satisfying benefits of the mobile web is the freedom to rapidly innovate and refine without approval or requiring the user to update and download. When Google could not get its voice application approved, for example, it responded by building a web version that required no approval process and used HTML5 for audio playback and SMS/Email for alerting.

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When To Create An App

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Once you’ve optimized the experience, you can use your mobile website to graduate users to a more robust native app.

One of the most important differences between a popular app and the thousands you’ve never heard of is the merchandising from the iTunes App chart. Hitting the Top 4 on the Free App chart drove over 250,000 downloads for the WhitePages Mobile App. Download volume and positive ratings are important factors needed to get onto the chart. We achieved first week download velocity by promoting the app on our mobile website, which we had steadily built an audience for. Learning and optimizing our mobile website helped us create a better app that led to better reviews and ratings. It helps to think of the mobile web as a beta, and the app as gold.

On-device placement is also important, and a bookmarked site gets the same favicon placement on your iPhone as a downloaded app. Social media will continue to be an important distribution engine, and sharing the URL for a mobile website provides one-click gratification.

Whether you are just starting to put your mobile strategy together or have been at it for some time, don’t just chase the shiny lure of an app before catching the mobile users that are already surfing your site. Let me know about your experience and best practices for building a mobile website in the comment section below.

The future of the Web is everywhere. The future of the Web is not at your desk. It’s not necessarily in your pocket, either. It’s everywhere. With each new technological innovation, we continue to become more and more immersed in the Web, connecting the ever-growing layer of information in the virtual world to the real one around us. But rather than get starry-eyed with utopian wonder about this bright future ahead, we should soberly anticipate the massive amount of planning and design work it will require of designers, developers and others.

The gap between technological innovation and its integration in our daily lives is shrinking at a rate much faster than we can keep pace with—consider the number of unique Web applications you signed up for in the past year alone. This has resulted in a very fragmented experience of the Web. While running several different browsers, with all sorts of plug-ins, you might also be running multiple standalone applications to manage feeds, social media accounts and music playlists.
Even though we may be adept at switching from one tab or window to another, we should be working towards a more holistic Web experience, one that seamlessly integrates all of the functionality we need in the simplest and most contextual way. With this in mind, let’s review four trends that designers and developers would be wise to observe and integrate into their work so as to pave the way for a more holistic Web browsing experience:

1. The browser as operating system,
2. Functionally-limited mobile applications,
3. Web-enhanced devices,
4. Personalization.

1. The Browser As Operating System

Thanks to the massive growth of Web productivity applications, creative tools and entertainment options, we are spending more time in the browser than ever before. The more time we spend there, the less we make use of the many tools in the larger operating system that actually runs the browser. As a result, we’re beginning to expect the same high level of reliability and sophistication in our Web experience that we get from our operating system.
For the most part, our expectations have been met by such innovations as Google’s Gmail, Talk, Calendar and Docs applications, which all offer varying degrees of integration with one another, and online image editing tools like Picnik and Adobe’s online version of Photoshop. And those expectations will continue to be met by upcoming releases, such as the Chrome operating system—we’re already thinking of our browsers as operating systems. Doing everything on the Web was once a pipe dream, but now it’s a reality.

Ubiquity

The one limitation of Web browsers that becomes more and more obvious as we make greater use of applications in the cloud is the lack of usable connections between open tabs. Most users have grown accustomed to keeping many tabs open, switching back and forth rapidly between Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and various social media tools. But this switching from tab to tab is indicative of broken connections between applications that really ought to be integrated.
Mozilla is attempting to functionally connect tools that we use in the browser in a more intuitive and rich way with Ubiquity. While it’s definitely a step in the right direction, the command-line approach may be a barrier to entry for those unable to let go of the mouse. In the screenshot below, you can see how Ubiquity allows you to quickly map a location shown on a Web page without having to open Google Maps in another tab. This is one example of integrated functionality without which you would be required to copy and paste text from one tab to another. Ubiquity’s core capability, which is creating a holistic browsing experience by understanding basic commands and executing them using appropriate Web applications, is certainly the direction in which the browser is heading.
This approach, wedded to voice-recognition software, may be how we all navigate the Web in the next decade, or sooner: hands-free.

Tracemonkey and Ogg

Meanwhile, smaller, quieter releases have been paving the way to holistic browsing. This past summer, Firefox released an update to its software that includes a brand new JavaScript engine called TraceMonkey. This engine delivers a significant boost in speed and image-editing functionality, as well as the ability to play videos without third-party software or codecs.
Aside from the speed advances, which are always welcome, the image and video capabilities are perfect examples of how the browser is encroaching on the operating system’s territory. Being able to edit images in the browser could replace the need for local image-editing software on your machine, and potentially for separate applications such as Picnik. At this point, it’s not certain how sophisticated this functionality can be, and so designers and ordinary users will probably continue to run local copies of Photoshop for some time to come.
The new video functionality, which relies on an open-source codec called Ogg, opens up many possibilities, the first one being for developers who do not want to license codecs. Currently, developers are required to license a codec if they want their videos to be playable in proprietary software such as Adobe Flash. Ogg allows video to be played back in Firefox itself.

What excites many, though, is that the new version of Firefox enables interactivity between multiple applications on the same page. One potential application of this technology, as illustrated in the image above, is allowing users to click objects in a video to get additional information about them while the video is playing.

2. Functionally-Limited Mobile Applications

So far, our look at a holistic Web experience has been limited to the traditional browser. But we’re also interacting with the Web more and more on mobile devices. Right now, casual surfing on a mobile device is not a very sophisticated experiences and therefore probably not the main draw for users. The combination of small screens, inconsistent input options, slow connections and lack of content optimized for mobile browsers makes this a pretty clumsy, unpredictable and frustrating experience, especially if you’re not on an iPhone.
However, applications written specifically for mobile environments and that deal with particular, limited sets of data—such as Google’s mobile apps, device-specific applications for Twitter and Facebook and the millions of applications in the iPhone App Store—look more like the future of mobile Web use. Because the mobile browsing experience is in its infancy, here is some advice on designing mobile experiences: rather than squeezing full-sized Web applications (i.e. ones optimized for desktops and laptops) into the pocket, designers and developers should become proficient at identifying and executing limited functionality sets for mobile applications.

Amazon Mobile

A great example of a functionally-limited mobile application is Amazon’s interface for the iPhone (screenshot above). Amazon has reduced the massive scale of its website to the most essential functions: search, shopping cart and lists. And it has optimized the layout specifically for the iPhone’s smaller screen.

Facebook for iPhone

Facebook continues to improve its mobile version. The latest version includes a simplified landing screen, with an icon for every major function of the website in order of priority of use. While information has been reduced and segmented, the scope of the website has not been significantly altered. Each new update brings the app closer to replicating the full experience in a way that feels quite natural.

Gmail for iPhone

Finally, Gmail’s iPhone application is also impressive. Google has introduced a floating bar to the interface that allows users to batch process emails, so that they don’t have to open each email in order to deal with it.

3. Web-Enhanced Devices

Mobile devices will proliferate faster than anything the computer industry has seen before, thereby exploding entry points to the Web. But the Web will vastly expand not solely through personal mobile devices but through completely new Web-enhanced interfaces in transportation vehicles, homes, clothing and other products.
In some cases, Web enhancement may lend itself to marketing initiatives and advertising; in other cases, connecting certain devices to the Web will make them more useful and efficient. Here are three examples of Web-enhanced products or services that we may all be using in the coming years:

Web-Enhanced Grocery Shopping

Web-connected grocery store “VIP” cards may track customer spending as they do today: every time you scan your customer card, your purchases are added to a massive database that grocery stores use to guide their stocking choices. In exchange for your data, the stores offer you discounts on selected products. Soon with Web-enhanced shopping, stores will be able to offer you specific promotions based on your particular purchasing history, and in real time (as illustrated above). This will give shoppers more incentive to sign up for VIP programs and give retailers more flexibility and variety with discounts, sales and other promotions.

Web-Enhanced Utilities

One example of a Web-enhanced device we may all see in our homes soon enough is a smart thermostat (illustrated above), which will allow users not only to monitor their power usage using Google PowerMeter but to see their current charges when it matters to them (e.g. when they’re turning up the heater, not sitting in front of a computer).

Web-Enhanced Personal Banking

Another useful Web enhancement would be a display of your current bank account balance directly on your debit or credit card (as shown above). This data would, of course, be protected and displayed only after you clear a biometric security system that reads your fingerprint directly on the card. Admittedly, this idea is rife with privacy and security implications, but something like this will nevertheless likely exist in the not-too-distant future.

4. Personalization

Thanks to the rapid adoption of social networking websites, people have become comfortable with more personalized experiences online. Being greeted by name and offered content or search results based on their browsing history not only is common now but makes the Web more appealing to many. The next step is to increase the user’s control of their personal information and to offer more tools that deliver new information tailored to them.

Centralized Profiles

If you’re like most people, you probably maintain somewhere between two to six active profiles on various social networks. Each profile contains a set of information about you, and the overlap varies. You probably have unique usernames and passwords for each one, too, though using a single sign-on service to gain access to multiple accounts is becoming more common. But why shouldn’t the information you submit to these accounts follow the same approach? In the coming years, what you tell people about yourself online will be more and more under your control. This process starts with centralizing your data in one profile, which will then share bits of it with other profiles. This way, if your information changes, you’ll have to update your profile only once.

Data Ownership

The question of who owns the data that you share online is fuzzy. In many cases, it even remains unaddressed. However, as privacy settings on social networks become more and more complex, users are becoming increasingly concerned about data ownership. In particular, the question of who owns the images, video and messages created by users becomes significant when a user wants to remove their profile. To put it in perspective, Royal Pingdom, in its Internet 2009 in Numbers report, found that 2.5 billion photos were uploaded to Facebook each month in 2009! The more this number grows, the more users will be concerned about what happens to the content they transfer from their machines to servers in the cloud.

While it may seem like a step backward, a movement to restore user data storage to personal machines, which would then intelligently share that data with various social networks and other websites, will likely spring up in response to growing privacy concerns. A system like this would allow individuals to assign meta data to files on their computers, such as video clips and photos; this meta data would specify the files’ availability to social network profiles and other websites. Rather than uploading a copy of an image from your computer to Flickr, you would give Flickr access to certain files that remain on your machine. Organizations such as the Data Portability Project are introducing this kind of thinking accross the Web today.

Recommendation Engines

Search engines—and the whole concept of search itself—will remain in flux as personalization becomes more commonplace. Currently, the major search engines are adapting to this by offering different takes on personalized search results, based on user-specific browsing history. If you are signed in to your Google account and search for a pizza parlor, you will more likely see local results. With its social search experiment, Google also hopes to leverage your social network connections to deliver results from people you already know. Rounding those out with real-time search results gives users a more personal search experience that is a much more realistic representation of the rapid proliferation of new information on the Web. And because the results are filtered based on your behavior and preferences, the search engine will continue to “learn” more about you in order to provide the most useful information.
Another new search engine is attempting to get to the heart of personalized results. Hunch provides customized recommendations of information based on users’ answers to a set of questions for each query. The more you use it, the better the engine gets at recommending information. As long as you maintain a profile with Hunch, you will get increasingly satisfactory answers to general questions like, “Where should I go on vacation?”
The trend of personalization will have significant impact on the way individual websites and applications are designed. Today, consumer websites routinely alter their landing pages based on the location of the user. Tomorrow, websites might do similar interface customizations for individual users. Designers and developers will need to plan for such visual and structural versatility to stay on the cutting edge.

Conclusion

Each of these trends—browser operating systems, mobile, Web-enhanced devices and personalization—provides a foundation for the other. First, traditional browsers will continue to expand their functional scope to meet our demands, ideally in a way that simplifies the user experience rather than just by adding more tabs or toolbars. But our demands will ultimately drive mobile innovation as well, expanding points of entry to the Web far beyond our desks.
As people grow accustomed to being able to access the Web from anywhere, the next logical step will be to create unique entry points, specific to context and purpose and crafted especially for us. This final stage will be truly transformative, imbuing our daily lives with a rich layer of uniquely targeted information that will make us more efficient and effective in what we do. But reaching every step along the way will fully depend on the vision of designers and developers to refine existing interfaces and create completely new ones.

To Sum Up

1. Web browsers will continue to be refined and expanded to include new functionality that will approach an operating system’s level of sophistication.
2. Designers and developers need to become proficient at identifying and executing functionally limited sets for mobile applications.
3. Previously unconnected objects will be enhanced with filters to send and receive contextual data across the Web. The design of these objects will change as a result of new interface attributes.
4. Personalization trends will give users more control over their information and bring new, relevant information to them.

Further Resources

• Mozilla’s Ubiquity Browser Extension
• Mozilla’s TraceMonkey Engine
• Ogg Open-Source Video Codec
• Amazon’s Mobile App
• Facebook’s Mobile Page
• Gmail for iPhone
• Royal Pingdom’s Internet 2009 in Numbers
• The Data Portability Project
• Google’s Social Search
• Hunch’s Recommendation Engine

Be Unique

One of the easiest ways to stand out in the App Store is to create an app that is unique. Sure, that makes sense. Yet still thousands and thousands of apps are uninspired, shovelled out by tired developers looking for a quick buck.
If you want to stick it to the man, make sure that you are either:

1. The first developer in your category of product, or
2. Reinventing the existing category with something unique.

If you’re just improving something that’s already available, your battle to market it will be uphill.

Spin an Existing Category

At this point in the history of the App Store, very few apps create new categories. So unless you’re sitting on a revolutionary new idea, focus your attention on a unique spin of an existing category. So many things can be re-imagined with little effort. Look at your competitors and flick on your child-like consumer filter. What cool feature for this category is missing? How can you take advantage of the iPhone’s interface, accelerometer, GPS or multi-touch functionality to create a package that delivers a unique experience in this category?
A unique feature will make your app stand a head taller in the crowd and raise eyebrows. And that’s exactly the effect you want if you intend to sell apps in the App Store.

• Think, plan and build with the intention of creating something unique. From the conceptual drafts to the final marketing, keep iterating the unique aspects of your product.
• Ask yourself if you are merely improving on someone else’s idea. If it already exists in the app store, the battle to market it will be uphill.
• Try some shortcuts to create something unique, such as mixing categories; thinking of new ways to use the accelerometer, GPS, proximity sensor and multi-touch gestures; storytelling; etc.
• If you’re competing in a saturated market, do the exact opposite of the leader.

Be Tweetable

Getting people to talk about your app is imperative for success. The more people talk, the more exposure your app will get, which will hopefully translate into sales. If your app is unique, you’re halfway there—people will talk about it just because of its uniqueness. But how do you encourage people to start up conversations about your product?

Learn to Pitch

I’m sure you’ve pitched your app to at least a dozen co-workers and puzzled family members. You know the ins and outs of your elevator speech, the highs and lows, the big sells of your product and the hard-to-understand parts. If you want your app to succeed, you will need to teach that pitch to the rest of the world.

Be Interesting

Make the conversation about your app easy and engaging. Make it so that people want to tweet about it. Tweetability—if no one has yet, I’m trademarking that word—refers to how well a product or message would move on Twitter. The Twitter network, with its millions of users, has a particular personality and disposition. Despite the diversity of people using the service, talking about it like a homogenous mass still makes sense in many ways. Some of the most successful apps are easily shared through social media. Imagine the twittersphere chattering in chipmunk voices, “Hey, guys. Check this out!” Instantly gratifying app + high tweetability = free exposure.
Even if your app isn’t instantly gratifying or playfully humorous, you can still compose a tweet that is highly tweetable. Just think of what you would retweet yourself. How would you sell your app in 140 characters?

• Play to your strengths. Write good copy. And have a solid, useful and attractive landing page.
• Find the human angle. Are there any amusing and beneficial reasons why people would use your app?
• Have a memorable tagline. Sum up your app’s purpose in one line.

Cater To Blogs

Social media and the blogosphere are not isolated from each other. Like ripples in a pond, the more people tweet about your app, the more likely you’ll hit a big blog.
Review blogs and tech websites are part of the App Store’s eco-system, and while the exact effect they have on sales is debatable, the traffic and buzz they generate are worth pursuing.

Think Like Media

To get good media coverage, you need to think like the media. How good a story is your app? Obviously, the law of uniqueness makes a difference here, but your app should also be easy to write about. First, provide a free press package that anyone can download. Supply people with the material they need to talk about your app. Give them a high-res version of the icon, screenshots and press-related texts.
Don’t be stingy with the promo keys either—in fact, dispense them liberally. Promo keys are cheap marketing collateral and a way for you to put your app in the hands of peer leaders. Throw the keys at your favorite blog, and invite them to give some away for free in a raffle. If you can find a category-specific blog, you’ve got a direct line to your target customers. It’s a great way to reach a new audience and strengthen your relationships and reputation.

Blogs Are Like Kids in a Schoolyard

While they may not want to hear this, blogs are a bit like kids in a schoolyard. If you can get the cool kids to talk about you, chances are that other blogs will pick up the story and throw you on their front page. Getting on review and media websites is vital to your marketing success, because they are less transient than tweets. Reviews stay there and bring in traffic for months.

• Give out promo codes to blogs without hesitation.
• Have an extensive and easily accessible press package.
• Don’t be afraid to ask individuals to endorse your app.
• Try to crack category-specific blogs. If you’re making a wine app, contact wine blogs.

Control The Hype

App sales thrive on hype. Learn to control the hype, and you will have mastered the product launch. Hype will always be partly out of your hands, but the rules mentioned above will help you put things in motion. But hype will amount to nothing if it’s for a poor product. While there is truth to the saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity, hype can backfire and harm your efforts to generate hype in future.

Hype Early

Start hyping early. If you know you have a unique product, let people in on the secret before the launch. Having an interesting “Coming soon” website can do this, by building a mailing list and getting Google juice for your domain.

Make Your Website Great

Needles to say, your app should have its own website. To make any of the rules above work, you will need a point of reference, somewhere to send the masses. Make the website interesting; show the app in action, and think outside the box. Make the website an extension of your app, and you will have yet another great tool in your marketing toolbox.

Launch Big

When you launch, make it big. Send out the triumphant newsletter, and hit all social media. Have you or your team write up blog posts, and pull every lever and handle in your network. Hype is all about critical mass: the first wave you set in motion will give you instant feedback on how to adjust your hype machine.
Maintaining hype is all about introducing new venues in which to exhibit your app. Get a steady stream of review websites to cover your app. Give away promo keys on Twitter, and serve new content on your website. Obviously, if you can get into the “What’s hot” or “New and noteworthy” sections of the App Store, you’ve made it far.
In the end, hype is part luck and part skill. The best way to balance the two is to keep asking yourself whether you can do anything else to add value, mystery, polish or spin to your product. Rely on your own judgement: what would excite you about this app if it were made by another developer?

• Give out promo codes on Twitter and in the blogosphere.
• Run contests related to your app. Give away prizes that make sense for your category.
• Boost popularity by timing the launch of your app to coincide with a live event or trending topic. Climate-related apps spiked around the COP15 Climate Summit in Copenhagen.
• Release your app with a big bang. Hold an online or live event. Attract visitors in creative ways, by building a game or puzzle or just throwing a contest or giveaway.

Example: Being Awesome In A Saturated Market

To illustrate the application of these rules, let’s take a play-by-play look at one successful app. For the sake of convenience, let’s just call it “Awesome app.”

Awesome app is a weather-forecasting app. This is a classic scenario: a re-thinking of an established category. I can’t think of a more tired and saturated market than weather apps, making this an excellent example of being able to re-invent and compete if we have the right frame of mind.

Unique Spin

The Awesome app reverse-engineers the trend of offering up increasingly detailed and advanced weather data. Instead, it trims down functionality and focuses on the very playful and human idea of exploring the weather visually, by swiping through a virtual forecast. It builds uniqueness right into the very concept and goes in the opposite direction of the market leaders.

Early Hype, Big Launch

Prior to launch, the website for Awesome app presents a “Coming soon” page that collects close to a thousand confirmed emails. A teaser video of the interface generates some buzz and earns the app a nomination in the App Star awards. The app launches at the end of December 2009. The release newsletter goes out; a more elaborate version of the website, with video and screenshots, goes up; and the developers make as much noise as they possibly can in their networks.

Review Websites

As soon as sales get a lift from the early launch hype, emails are sent out to various review websites offering promo keys. Reviews started flowing in, and chatter about the app is monitored on Twitter, where developers offer help and follow up on questions. A “Making the app” video is posted that gives existing customers something to enjoy (and that humanizes the team), highlighting user recommendations.

The website for Awesome app gets some wind of its own by being featured in various design blogs for its modern use of CSS animations, contributing hype that doesn’t have anything to do with the app itself.

Picked Up by Larger Websites

A week and a half after launch, larger websites such as TUAW started showing interest. And coverage peaks with a TechCrunch article, which ripples out to LifeHacker and other major websites. More than a month in and we’re still seeing continued interest in the app; it has gathered hundreds of five-star reviews in the App Store and has been featured in both “New and noteworthy” and “What’s hot.”

What Worked?

What worked for Awesome app was a combination of the marketing rules discussed above:

• It was sufficiently unique in a crowded market to spark interest and be seen as a “good story.”
• The idea of a “visual weather forecast” was easy to convey and was presented in a way that gave it high tweetability.
• It was completely the opposite of what leading competitors were doing.
• The team started hyping early with a “Coming soon” page. It was appealing enough for people to tweet about it, and it eventually attracted visitors not only because of the app but because of the design of the website.
• A press package with everything you could want was freely available on the website, making it easy for blogs to write about the app.

Parting Thought

Not a single dime was spent on marketing it, yet the Awesome app reached tens of thousands of people. If you have a unique product and apply some of the ideas above, you too can secure free exposure for your beloved app. It’s a rather democratic and honest process because you are required to re-invent apps by adding unique features. Marketing then becomes all about making it easier and more interesting for people to talk about and share your creation.
As with most other things in life, there’s no surefire way to create a successful app. But keeping in mind some of the things we’ve talked about here—both at the conception and the execution stage—will put you in a position to build awareness of your application much more easily.