According to Stephan Spencer, SEO expert, co-author of The Art of SEO (O'Reilly, 2009) and author of Google Power Search (O’Reilly, 2011), iPad “mobile-friendly” does not equal “iPad-friendly.” Mobile sites are designed for a teeny-tiny screen and translate to a deficient user experience on the iPad. “iPad users exhibit behaviors more akin to desktop computer users than smartphone users,” he says. “Thus, it behooves you to have an iPad optimization strategy separate from your mobile strategy.” Here are five considerations from Spencer when optimizing for iPad.
1. Mobile Web Site: Your mobile site should never be served up automatically to the iPad user. This can happen inadvertently when your web server’s “user-agent detection” is overly broad in its matching of mobile user agents (the user-agent strings for the iPhone and iPad are very similar; the iPad’s even includes the word "mobile").
2. Layout and Formatting: Your Web site design should lay out correctly whether the user is holding the iPad in landscape mode or portrait mode. Furthermore, when in landscape mode the primary call-to-action should still be visible without scrolling.
3. Retool Your Navigation: iPad users cannot hover their cursor, potentially rendering any mouse-over navigation unusable. On the iPad, holding your finger down invokes the copy-and-paste function rather than creating a hover state.
4. Lack of Flash: What are the implications of not having Flash? For one, you will find a content-less hole in many home pages. Some sites will display a blank space where the Flash animation would have been. The workaround involves a mix of user-agent detection, HTML5 and a professional developer.
5. Test Rigorously: Without rigorous testing, you may never know that your site does not work on the iPad. Do not rely on your users to tell you.