Responsive Design vs Tapatalk

Ian Eberle

Ian Eberle

Member
I just bought XenForo yesterday and I'm still trying to decide - should I go with a responsive design or use Tapatalk or use both? I was looking at this - http://xenforo.com/community/resources/responsive-design.1189/

Responsive pros:
1. Makes forum easier to read on mobile devices
2. Makes it look more professional since it's responsive to mobile

Responsive cons:
1. Replying to and making threads is still a pain. It works better than a full version of the site, but it's no native smartphone app
2. The Add-on is $30

Tapatalk Pros:
1. Makes it easy to post photos, reply to threads, make new threads, etc from smartphone
2. Push notifications to alert forum users

Tapatalk Cons:
1. Mobile viewers get an annoying popup about Tapatalk every time they view the forum
2. The app costs money for the users to buy.

What do you guys think? Should I go responsive, Tapatalk, or both?

P.S. Forum Runner is out of the question now that it's owned by vBulletin.
 
Another con for Tapatalk is that it'll eat up a large portion of your ad revenue unless you pay for their custom app.

I'm planning to limit tapatalk usage to my premium members as theres been too much ad revenue since installing it.
 
What do you mean it'll eat up your ad revenue? Like the ads don't appear in Tapatalk so you don't have a chance to make money from them?

I haven't even really started my forum yet, but I'm planning on finding about 5 people and telling them I'll make them premium members for life if they help me out and get the forum started by creating threads and responding to them.
 
That's right.

There's no ads.

I get the feeling that we're approaching the point where native apps are going to become less favourable over functional mobile themes (or responsive themes).

There's a considerably less amount of risk, effort and cost with a mobile site over a native app. Native apps, I feel, will be reserved for cases where there is absolutely some functionality that cannot be achieved with a native app.

One such example could be push notifications, or accessing certain phone APIs that you can't access via websites (e.g. contacts, I believe).

Also, if you develop an app, you severely hamper its reach unless you develop it (and maintain it) for at least iOS and Android. You're still missing a trick really by not having a Windows Phone and BlackBerry version.

Whereas, a mobile theme. Instantly compatible with all devices.

So yeah, I think we will see a downward trend in native apps in favour of mobile friendly sites over the next year or two.
 
Forsaken said:
Another con for Tapatalk is that it'll eat up a large portion of your ad revenue unless you pay for their custom app.

I'm planning to limit tapatalk usage to my premium members as theres been too much ad revenue since installing it.
Click to expand...

Good point as that starts to worry me as well.
 
Okay. I've also seen a lot of people complaining about Tapatalk having bugs and errors. The last thing I want is Tapatalk to use too many resources on my server and just slow everything down. Another thing that wasn't mentioned about the responsive mobile theme is that it actually has your forum's design. Tapatalk has just a generic design that looks either like an iOS app or an Android app - it doesn't look like the design of your forum.

I think I'll go with the responsive theme add-on. If it doesn't work out completely, I'll put Tapatalk on too.
 
I'm pretty sure that has to do with affiliate links, not like advertisements. Many people sell direct advertisements on their forums in addition to using Google AdSense. These are the ads people were talking about.
 
principia said:
no ads?
and whats that?


View attachment 38217
Click to expand...
Ian Eberle said:
I'm pretty sure that has to do with affiliate links, not like advertisements. Many people sell direct advertisements on their forums in addition to using Google AdSense. These are the ads people were talking about.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that is one way of monetizing TapaTalk but overall it's not going to cut it for those who, like Ian says, sell their adverts direct. There's nothing to say it would be any better or worse than Google ads though, I'm not sure on this. If it's as good as or better than Google Ads then maybe it's worth doing for most people.
 
It may only be an affiliate link for TapaTalk, though, so that would make it even more limiting. It looks like responsive is the way to go :)

XenForo should use that plugin I have linked in my first post here on this forum. Or even better, they should buy it off the developer and include it in XenForo as a default... That's a feature no other forum software has :)
 
I really really like the idea of a responsive design. I don't use an tablets or smart phones (I just have a cheap pre-paid), but I understand they are growing in users and many people do use theme. Not sure why xF doesn't have responsive by default, maybe its on the to do list. I'm starting to notice websites are being re-designed with responsive styling... roadandtrack.com just launched their new design, and even VB5 Beta; however VB5 feels poorly done, but I suppose it is "beta".

Arty's responsive design add-on you linked is actually really good. I purchased it and I was playing around with it on my test board and it seems almost perfect.

Here is a good website to indicate what a website looks: http://www.responsinator.com/ ...
 
Ian Eberle said:
Responsive cons:
2. The Add-on is $30
Click to expand...

Actually, you should move that to a Pro. That is definitely cheap considering all it does. I installed Tapatalk a long time ago.... hated it. The reason I wanted to get away from it, was because I didn't want members who wanted to view my site on mobile to incur any additional cost if it could be avoided. I never understood making people who WANT to see your site, have to pay to get to it on mobile.
 
Responsive design is well worth the $30. The fact that it allows you to make any style responsive is even better. The support from Arty is outstanding.

Tapatalk is full of bugs, and doesn't really have a forum feel to it. I'm glad I got away from it.
 
I actually quite like Tapatalk myself.

Sure, it's not perfect, but it's intuitive, and with its push notifications, it's enticing me to visit the forum more.

I might try out the Responsive design, but am hoping the promised XF-internal mobile style from 1.2 will be made available soon-ish.
 
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