So you have decided that you definitely must be on the iPhone. The upsell will always be “Do the App!” – it’s sexier for you and it’s much sexier for the agency / developer – but is that necessarily the best economical (or even functional) option? When discussing iPhone development with clients, we often look at whether it makes more sense to do an iPhone Optimized Site versus an iPhone App itself. Below are just a few pros and cons for both options:

iPhone Optimized Site

Pros

• Cheaper and Faster to develop
• Easier to modify existing content for Safari optimized viewing
• No barrier to deploy to market (i.e. iTunes approval)
• Site icons can be displayed on ‘deck’ similar to iPhone apps
• Can still take advantage of photo and video viewing specific to the iPhone

Cons

• Limited by HTML/CSS (i.e. no 3D game here)
• Can’t notify user automatically of updates to the site
• Can’t leverage iPhone features such as GPS
• Need to have EDGE / WiFi to function
• Safari browser will not display Flash*

*Though Flash continues to be rumored for the iPhone, this will most likely never happen due to continued concerns of Flash being a ‘resource hog’

iPhone App

Pros

• Allows much more flexibility in terms of 3D, animation, etc.
• New information can be pushed to the consumer via application updates
• Promotion of App through store and on iPhone App related sites
• Can generally be viewed / played at any time
• Community will tell you right away if they think your App is great through user reviews

Cons

• Objective C development (i.e. more expensive)
• Longer time to market due to submission / wait times for iTunes review and approval
• Can only be accessed and downloaded via the iTunes App Store
• Apple ultimately determines if your app is ‘worthy’ enough to reside on their platform (i.e. loss of control)
• Community will tell you right away if they think your App sucks through user reviews

Your ultimate decision for using an iPhone App or iPhone Optimized Site should always be determined by what it’s being created for. Would you want to create the latest and greatest version of iFart as an iPhone Optimized Site? Probably not. But if your basic need is to optimize photos and videos for mobile then it probably makes more sense to develop an iPhone Optimized Site. And I use ‘develop’ loosely here as many content driven sites can be tweaked for mobile viewing and might not even require a full development overhaul.

A great example of content you might initially think is an iPhone App but in reality is an iPhone Optimized Site is iHalo Stats.  For non-gamers out there, this lets you check on all your stats from the game and is still one of the best examples of an iPhone Optimized Site.

For some shameless self-promotion, you can even view the web optimized iPhone site Zugara created for Playboy at http://iphone.playboy.com. To get all the highlights, view the site in the Safari browser on your desktop or through the iPhone itself! Note – The site only has PG-13 content on it and nothing worse than you would see on Maxim.com.

I’ll have more thoughts iPhone specific development as well as Mobile Marketing in general in future blog entries, but if you have any questions you can always get a hold of me at Matt (at) Zugara dot com or @KobraKai on Twitter…