Hi All-
I’m building a mobile app for my existing pretty powerful website (social news feed, profiles, and then all of the exclusive functionality of my web app).
Is there a pattern for shipping a minimal amount of functionality with the mobile app and giving the user some kind of notion to go to the website for more?
Should I link out feature by feature to the existing website? Should I just have a link to the website under a more button?
Is there a good UX option here?
Any guidance is much appreciated!
Jon
it depends on what the complex “pro” features are you can not provide in your mobile app.
If they are only gimmicks but the main functionalities are all there i would not refer directly to the website in your app context.
Leaving the app context is not a good ux-behave, but it can not be avoided in any cases.
Example: We have built a shopping app, where you have a short description of a product in the detail view (because other text were to long and so on). So we added a “more info” button under the Detail-View, but it was really “visible” on the page… so any use was clicking on it by default, because… “hey there is a light green button on that page”.
So we added after the first click on that button a little popup with the message “that you will redirected to the product website in the mobile browser” and a checkbox where you can hide this popup (set localstorage flag to not show it again).
In other complex apps you have something like Tutorial-Overlays and Walkthroughs, but i think… this is for small apps a little bit to much. Even i handle it so --> the app have to be self-explaining.
In you case, you should think about, if this feature is really needed. If not i would not link it in the app.
And you can explain app users, that this is the app for you app, with the main-features and so on.
If there are additional features you need authorized for… i would not link them, because if they are not logged in on there phone and the browser they have to login first on the website and so on… thats not a good solution. So do not let the user see the feature.