Is Your Website Usable on an iPad?

In my posting Critical Internet Marketing Techniques for 2012, I stated that the internet is now being accessed from more mobile devices than laptop or desktop computers. The explosion in the adoption of smartphones and tablet devices has lead to more internet users accessing their favorite social media sites, and shopping online, whilst on the move. I also stated that it would be wise to have a version of your business website that can be accessed from such mobile devices and still be usable. Many websites do not display well on mobile devices and become unusable as a result.

Even if you have taken the steps to create a mobile version of your website, the chances are it may not work on an Apple iPad. The popularity of the iPad has made it the dominant tablet used to access the internet. Research has shown that iPad users are also not averse to purchasing online so ecommerce businesses especially should ensure their site is usable on this device.

What makes the iPad different, from a web browsing and usability viewpoint, is that iPad users mainly use touch to navigate their way around your website. Certain functions are missing that could render your website unusable and a mobile friendly site will not necessarily be iPad friendly, so if you think that serving the mobile version of your website to iPad users solves the problem, you are wrong.

Landscape and Portrait Modes

The iPad can be held in a landscape or portrait position and will automatically re-adjust the screen position. In some cases this can lead to your call to action suddenly disappearing below the fold in portrait mode. Also depending on how your web developer coded the position of certain elements on the page, you could find your website being re-drawn incorrectly making it look a mess.

Navigation

The multi-touch display of the iPad is one of the reasons users love it so much. The problem it brings is that if, for example, your website relies on the cursor being hovered over a menu and then a drop-down menu appears, this won’t work on the iPad. This means iPad users will never be able to select anything from the drop-down menu!

Flash is not supported

Apple took the decision not to support Flash, which is used to show video and to animate various things on the majority of websites. Instead the iPad uses HTML5 for video. If your website shows video or any kind of animation that uses Flash, you will have to get your website developer to convert to HTML5 or some other supported coding such as Javascript and CSS. Sorry I am getting geeky at this point, just talk to your web developer if you are unsure, and bear in mind this will need looking at.

What does your existing website look like on an iPad?

If you are not sure whether your website will be usable on an iPad, or you are curious to know what it looks like and don’t possess one, you can go to http://ipadgeek.com and type in the address of your website in the address bar on the iPad image. You must do this in a Safari web browser from a Mac, or download the browser to your windows PC before visiting the website (it is free).

If your web developer needs more help creating an iPad friendly version of your website, point him or her to an excellent Apple resource at
http://developer.apple.com/library/safari/search/?q=ipad

I hope you find this helpful and don’t dismiss this as something you may want to get around to. You are missing out on a large audience of people, and potential sales, if your website is not accessible on an iPad.

Good luck.

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