Regular desktop computer viewed websites CAN be viewed on a mobile device with a mobile browser but it’s not very comfortable. Usually they have to scroll and scroll just to see your contact information IF they ever get that far. Often they just go back to your competitor.

According to studies already 250 million people world wide access the Internet via their mobile phones and growing fast. You just can’t afford to ignore this huge flood of potential customers.

Many people are accessing websites via their phones every single day. I actually got started with this because I was reviewing one of my client’s statistics. I noticed that one of my customers was getting about 30+ visitors a month using a mobile device but these people were only staying on the site a few seconds. When I looked at the website on my own phone I quickly figured out why; the site looked terrible! It wasn’t optimized for mobile viewing.

Mobile websites are especially valuable in tourist areas or when targeting out of town travelers. Think about it for a second. When people travel they are often relying on their phones to show them the way. It’s crucial that businesses like hotels and restaurants have a site that is mobile friendly!

It allows you to offer two separate ways to show information, catering to each. When I first realized that my client’s website was not “mobile friendly” I considered proposing a redesign of the site. This didn’t make sense because the site was already optimized and working well for people that were viewing it on their computers. Creating a completely separate site and redirecting mobile users to it allows you to have two completely different sites each optimized for their target audience.

It opens up unique mobile opportunities. Once you have a mobile website, you can do a few special things with it. You can submit it to mobile directories. You can also take advantage of showing the search engines that you have your own mobile site which is quickly becoming the only way Google will even list your site near the top of search results. I feel this will become increasingly important in the days ahead.

It loads faster. You need to remember that even the newest iPhone features an internet browser that is about as fast as dialup. If you have a website that is loaded down with images and other media it is going to load super slow. Each second the user has to wait the chance of losing that person increases. Mobile sites are built to load fast.

1) Place the mobile site on a folder underneath your website, such as: MySite.com/mobile

2) Place the mobile site on an entirely different domain, preferably a “mobi”: MySite.mobi

You can certainly do whatever you want, but I have chosen to build the mobile websites on separate domains. (In either case, people will be visiting the main website first, and then mobile users will be redirected to the mobile site, so don’t worry about that)

Here are a few reasons why I feel this is the best way to go:

1) Mobi domains can be purchased rather inexpensively (currently $7 apiece). That’s cheap!

2) Makes redirecting easier. We will discuss this later, but having a separate domain makes this incredibly easier.

3) Allows you to market each domain separately. This is something that will become more and more valuable as mobile marketing continues to evolve.

4) Gives you additional “virtual real estate”. Showing the search engines that you, or your client’s business has its own mobile website certainly is not going to hurt!

5) This is something many big companies are doing. And if you want to stay ahead of the curve, you want to do this!