Is it good or bad to follow iPhone native look and feel in design of mobile Websites?

Question

Is it good or bad to follow iPhone native look and feel in design of mobile Websites?

I'm making Mobile website for Smartphones (iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, BlackBerry, Windows 7 Mobile) but the UI is inspired by iPhone UI. But website can be seen on other mobiles too

So it is good or it can be confusing for user?

Edit: These are some example of sites which are using iphone like UI

http://m.ua.edu/i/

http://iweathr.com/iweathr/ (open in iphone)

And this is example of website which is not following iPhone UI

http://www.kelseyads.com/site.php/mobile/

Answer 1

Only if your users are iPhone users otherwise it will best to design keeping in mind that users could be visiting your site using any smart-phones. Apart from ensuring the site works on various modes (landscape/portrait) etc, it will be good to check for accessibility compliance as well. There is a rise in the users with challenges using smart phones against Web on pc/mac

Answer 2

I'm sorry, but it's a myth that iPhone styles have "set the rules of UX on mobile". They have put a lot of budget behind marketing and they've created a loyal following of app developers.

But it's extremely important to remember that they have a relatively small market share.

See here: Guardian article

and here: Global smartphone penetration by region

Symbian has a huge market share and when it's gone Windows will probably take its place.

Designing your mobile site for iPhone is like designing solely for Internet Explorer. Not only is it bad practice in the short term, it helps to establish bad practices going forward.

If you're looking for a starting point in terms of styling, it's worth looking at the Sencha or Jquery Mobile libraries.

Building a W3C widget using Phonegap allows you to create one build that ports to multiple platforms. Users' devices will interpret the code accordingly.

No one is going to "set the rules". Strive to deliver interfaces that meet user and business requirements and your products will stand a good chance of succeeding.

Answer 3

We're mulling this over as well. Not a direct answer, but things to consider:

• making the Web UI look native to the device can help users intuit a lot of the interactions
• making the Web UI look native to the device can also be frustrating if the web UI doesn't quite pull it off to the same level as the native device
• web apps tend to be significantly slower than native due to network lag. Sometimes native UIs don't accommodate this lag very well.
• Not everyone uses an iPhone. And iPhone web UI on a blackberry could be odd.
• Most mobile UIs suck compared to the iPhone, so maybe having the iPhone UI on all is a good thing.
• Remember that not everyone is using a touch device. Many that are touch devices still have physical keyboards that people may be using, so be sure to accommodate that scenario as well.

Answer 4

The answer is quite simple.

iPhone has set the rules of UX on mobile. The other players are followers.

The main differences between the 2 big player (iOS & Android) are finally the buttons (menu & back) and long-tap actions.

So that say, how does your mobile app needs theses actions? The back action is the one you can't cope with. And you can't make dedicated UI for devices with buttons or without. So you'll need to have a back button. And it has to be in the iPhone-style.

Would you change the standard when designing a web-page? would you put the search bar at the top-left corner?

PS: I'm not talking about texture & graphic design, but about the layout and interactions

Answer 5

The best option would be to customize the website to every Smarthphone look there is and automatically choose the correct style depending on which Smartphone the user uses. This could easely be accompliched through different techniques. One example: in PHP you would use $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] which lets you “know” by which smartphone your website is requested.

But (there is always at least one, isn’t it) this costs a lot of time and money, and is harder to maintain as the site grows. Your probably better of using the same style on the site, having in mind that there are differences between smartphone browsers. Android and iPhone built in browser uses a different technique than that on Windows Phone 7. There are also other browsers available for download in the market.

Even more importantly is to use relative sizes and big enough image sizes since screen size and resolution on smartphones varies a lot. Otherwise your web app could end up not filling the whole screen (which I’ve seen sometimes on my HTC Desire HD). Remember that the app also should be able to use in landscape mode.

But if the style should be of iPhone native look or not is a question of eastetics. From my point of view it really doesn’t matter as long as the design does not constrain my browsing behaviour. I want to be able to do all of the things that iPhone users can do, and if your web app would allow me to, I would be most happy to use it.