There are literally hundreds of sites, books and companies specializing in web standards and usability, but when it comes to such standards for websites designed to accommodate iPhones, there are not very many places one can turn for advice. Apple’s iPhone is the most phenomenal new mobile Internet device to appear on the scene in recent memory. When we consider the differences inherent in its reduced resolution footprint, and users who navigate with a finger as opposed to a mouse, it becomes evident that established standards are, in fact, a necessity.

Turnkey Solutions
For example, iPhone Microsites LLC offers turnkey solutions that can effectively detect users visiting your site from an iPhone. However, that’s only half of the equation. The other half is - how should your website react to this affluent group of over 6 million mobile consumers who, predictably, will grow to twenty million in the near future?

The answer lies in defining the kind of presentation you want your iPhone users to experience. Unwittingly, you may be shutting them out. Generally speaking, what you really want is the opposite effect - you want to make their access easy and their experience pleasant, without detracting from their regular browsing capabilities.

Why do people come to your website?
It’s because they’re looking for something, most likely information. Don’t shut them out of portions of your website just because of their choice of a browsing platform. That’s unnecessary. Your objective should be to provide them optimized content in a familiar context, namely an iPhone friendly interface - but, if they would also like to view your regular website from their iPhones, they should be able to do so.

Consider Established Website Usability Practices
An emerging pitfall that restricts and confines iPhone microsite visitors is similar in user response to “turn-of-the-century” browser-sizing scripts that effectively hijacked the active window and fixed its dimensions. While such sites were “optimized” to accommodate specific dimensions, site creators restricted their users’ ability to manipulate the size of the window when viewing any other site - at least until a new window was opened.

The problem was complicated even further by the suppression of the window’s scrollbars and/or toolbars, effectively removing the visitors’ ability to scroll content or navigate pages, ultimately resulting in their frustration. Where applicable, site creators should reference established usability practices for content delivery as a guideline for how to properly react to users accessing their sites from this revolutionary new content delivery medium.

Guidelines for serving your website
You may consider offering your regular website to iPhone visitors either by a prompt when they visit for the first time, (you can set a cookie to record the preference), or in some context of the microsite itself, such as a link in the footer. Alternatively, you may present this option by serving a message to iPhone visitors within the context of your regular site. This can be accomplished by combining browser detection with an iPhone specific content block, which allows it’s display to iPhone users only.

By allowing your iPhone visitors access to your regular website, in addition to your iPhone Microsite, you provide them with a truly enhanced view of your presentation. Your microsite will add value to your website by catering to this emerging, vast and untapped mobile marketplace, saturated with today’s technologically sophisticated consumers.

Serving iPhone-optimized content
Depending on the layout and configuration of your website, you may be able to use this visitor information to re-shuffle your content “on the fly” and make it more legible for iPhone visitors (or users of other mobile devices). For example, consider that a typical website may consist of a header with navigation, a content area, a sidebar and a footer.

It is possible to set up your website to declare a style sheet that configures this content in a more legible manner for iPhone viewers, while using the original style sheet to format the content for the rest of your visitors. It is worth noting when considering this approach, that you should analyze the file size of your content and consider swapping out re-optimized assets whenever possible to support the connection speeds of EDGE and 3G users.

When you have decided how you want your website to react to iPhone visitors, either by providing an iPhone Microsite, an iPhone friendly website or simply a special message or offer, you will have taken the first steps necessary in enhancing your visitors’ experiences when they are visiting your site from an iPhone.

-Shaun Mackey

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