Bloomberg Businessweek reported that in the fourth quarter of 2010, more smartphones were sold than PCs. Sales of smartphones are expected to reach $120 billion in sales. With the rise in access to websites through mobile devices, you should ensure that your web site is both viewable and usable to the mobile user. Two areas in which you should focus are content and layout.

Content

First and foremost, visitors go to your website for content. Those visitors accessing your site at home tend to have a different area of focus than those on the go. Mobile visitors are more narrowly action-oriented. They are looking to find you, contact you, or perform an action on their account (e.g., reviewing/approving documents, making payments, etc.). A page with the most useful links that your mobile visitors will need helps them log on and get done quickly. It makes sense to have a mobile area of your site that can direct these people to these targeted tasks.

Your website development and marketing teams can make the best determination as to advertise a completely different website address (e.g., mobile.yoursite.com, www.yoursite.com/mobile,  or www.yoursite.mobi), or to detect whether the person accessing your website is on a mobile device and automatically redirect them to the new site. It is possible to use the same website to serve both your mobile and home users, but carefully weigh this approach. Unless your website is very simple and small, you will spend a lot more time trying to serve two different purposes with the same page than to make a clean split early in the design of your website.

If your mobile users are on your website for more than two minutes, you run the risk of frustrating them. Get them the information they need so they can return to their active lives, and they will be much happier

Layout

Smartphone screens can be as small as 150x150 pixels. They may not have support for color, JavaScript, frames, layers, or plugins (most commonly, Shockwave/Flash). Adding to these restrictions, smartphones may not have broadband access to the Internet, making large or complex web pages virtually impossible to render to the handheld screen.

How Can I Express Myself Visually on a Mobile Device?

Express yourself primarily by delivering content as quickly to your mobile users. Leave your gorgeous graphics, and beautifully crafted text at home (literally/figuratively). There is still room to brand your mobile site, but keep your content and navigation as the focus of this project.

Navigation

Yes, navigation should also be addressed in your choices for layout. Keep the menu short and simple; seven or fewer items in the menu make scanning the navigation easier to do. The menu should be separate from the content of the page, and not take up so much room that it takes the visitor a great deal of scrolling to get to the content.

Test

There are so many smartphones and mobile devices out there, it is virtually impossible (and expensive) to see how your website will look on every device. Take your website down to its most basic level. You can download a text browser, like Lynx, to get a sense of how your website will behave with no graphics or add-ons. If you can navigate your website and get key content quickly with a text browser, you stand a good chance that mobile browsers will have an easier time with your website as well.