Yesterday I started a series about optimizing your website for tablets and mobile devices. To kick off the series I want to talk about a hot startup that’s raised millions for their iPad publishing solution called Onswipe.
Experimenting with iPad Site Optimization with Onswipe
The current design I’m using for the Lauren Proctor Internet Marketing Blog was built to adjust to the screen size of mobile and tablet users, but in the nature of experimentation, I decided to see how the user experience changed when I replaced the current iPad version of my site with a hot service called Onswipe.
What is Onswipe? Why Use It?
Rather than explain the gist of it, I’ll take the summary straight from the company:
Onswipe is fully customizable by offering thousands of layout combinations and the ability to add your blog’s branding. Get started in under 3 minutes for free.
What’s attractive about Onswipe is its simplicity. I installed Onswipe as a WordPress plugin and got it running in about one minute. The theme selections are attractive, but best of all the app is supposed to help increase the traffic you receive from tablets.
One case study I saw increased page views 23 percent. After the first week of installing Onswipe, daily unique visitors increased 39 percent. As web marketers we’re all in the business of attracting eyeballs so I’ll get back to you with a report about whether or not Onswipe increased my tablet traffic after a month or so. In the meantime, let’s talk about my first impressions.
Onswipe WordPress Plugin Review
As I mentioned before, the simplicity of installing Onswipe was incredible. You can download the Onswipe WordPress plugin here and literally launch an iPad optimized blog in minutes.
The plugin inserts a tab on the side of your WordPress dashboard where you can customize the accent color of your site and pick the site design for the website you want to display when people open your domain on the iPad. This part of the process couldn’t be simpler, but I found a few shortcomings I wish I could correct.
- Onswipe took over my entire site. – I run all of LaurenProctor32.com on WordPress. As a result, when I installed Onswipe my newly designed blog page cannibalized everything else. The about me, the services pages. Completely gone unless the user things to use the button at the bottom of the iPad screen to access the full version of my site.
- Some WordPress Shortcodes Don’t Work – It didn’t take long to figure it out. My [contact form] short code didn’t work with the Onswipe theme.
If you want to check out the experience for yourself, go to the Lauren Proctor Internet Marketing Blog from your iPad. So you have the raw, one-minute install experience I’m not going to tweak with the default settings at all. (Note: Depending on traffic and usage statistics, I may not continue to use Onswipe. As a result this view may not last forever.)
The Final Word
Let’s face it, Onswipe is genius. Google is already taking paid search traffic away from websites that aren’t optimizing for mobile and it’s not difficult to imagine organic penalties in the future as well.
Onswipe is the simplest good looking solution I’ve seen for nearly-instant iPad website optimization. They’re going to be hard to beat.
