iPhone-lite sites are better than their full fat counterparts 18 Dec 2007

David Emery points out an interesting side effect of companies' rush to release iPhone-optimised versions of their sites:

"iPhone optimised sites are -- for better or worse -- springing up all over the place, but quite frequently they're actually better then the 'full' site they're complementing...Fox News actually have a very nice iPhone site which is simple and easy to navigate around, unlike the sprawling mess that is their main site...A better case in point is Bloglines...The original interface is very long in the tooth (it uses frames!) and seems to be quite unstable, whereas the new beta version suffers from missing the features I depend upon from the existing version (like a 'Read all' function) and uses lots of CPU in Safari at least...Enter stage right comes the iPhone version of Bloglines, which can be found -- confusingly enough -- at i.bloglines.com. It's better then both the main versions, so much so that I've considered using it full time instead. The interface is so much clearer, with the use of iPhone-standard Helvetica really helping things (both the main interfaces have appalling typography and design). It's also quicker, I guess because the pages it's loading are simpler."

We've certainly noticed this phenomenon too - iPhone sites are typically a lot simpler than their "full fat" counterparts...although it's important not to get too carried away. Facebook-lite, for example, is great for doing 90% of the things you want to do in Facebook (like read your news feed, update your status, check your inbox for new messages, post something on someone's wall etc.), but there's still a lot of stuff you can't do (like upload photos, add widgets, manage your account / settings, and so on). So there's two things to learn from the iPhone-optimised site phenomenon: (i) as a general rule of thumb, simpler is better; (ii) however, simplicity is often overrated. In other words, make your site as simple as possible without removing useful features.