Oneupweb : The Beautiful Simplicity of the Microsite

Working as a front-end web developer, I occasionally find myself with the “starfish problem”. What was originally meant to be a simple and elegant website, breaks off into a new direction, which in turn, becomes its own project or “starfish”. Cousin to the much dreaded “feature creep”, the root cause of this can usually be attributed to not adhering to the original design documents and scope of the project.

After wrapping up larger projects, I find it vitally important to re-center myself. A great way to accomplish this is by developing a one-page “microsite”. Deceptive in its simplicity, the microsite is a great way for you to get back in touch with the power and flexibility of web development—while keeping you from being able to splinter off into multiple directions at once.

Recently, I found myself tasked with the development of a microsite for our recently released Boat Load™ app for the iPhone. Coming off of a large website project with many independent elements, this was the perfect opportunity for me to revisit the value of simplicity.

The talented design team here at Oneupweb handed me a fantastic design. I then proceeded to assemble into a working single page site. An interactive iPhone element worked well to communicate the expectations one could expect to have with the application. Using Facebook and Twitter’s APIs, I was able to scrape content from their social networks to keep the page dynamic with fresh content. Simple AJAX calls were employed to allow the end user to access a depth of content without having any excessive site loading.

Check the final result out for yourself and tell me what you think. Personally, I think the application and the website are two of the best things we’ve produced. I’d love to hear a boatload of feedback! And check out the new app in the iTunes store! We’d love to receive your reviews!