Some recent client activity prompted me to put together a high level summary that clarifies mobile - what it is and why a business should care.

Start with a Litmus Test

The test is not "can I see my site on a smart device."

The test is "is the site usable and will I return."

What makes a site mobile friendly?

Just because you can see your desktop site on a mobile phone doesn’t mean it’s mobile-friendly. Mobile sites are designed for the small screen, with the needs of mobile users in mind. A mobile-friendly site can help your business connect with customers and drive conversions.

What kinds of things does a mobile site do differently than a desktop site?

Things like having compatible content. The mobile devices have smaller screen sizes, touch displays, and different capabilities, so sites need to be designed differently to accommodate them. The pipeline to a device can be smaller, so assets such as images and media need to be optimized. And interfaces like navigation, forms, and other interactives need redesign so that they provide the usability that a visitor needs just to browse and work with the site.

What's the Difference between a Native App and a Web App?

A native app can access the camera, GPS, microphone, device contacts, device calendar and is submitted to an app store for publication. A web app runs on the Internet Browser of any smartphone or tablet but cannot access the native resources on the devices that native apps can.

Your customers are already mobile. Are you?

• 2011: Mobile devices now outsell desktop devices; Mobile searches have grown by 4x since 2010.
• 2012: More people will use their mobile phones than PCs to get online.
• 2015: There will be one mobile device for every person on earth.

Users expect their mobile experience to be as good as their desktop experience.

• 40% will turn to a competitor's site
• 57% would not recommend a business with a bad mobile site
• 79% prefer mobile sites to apps for product reviews

Who’s Mobile Now?

It’s a top down event – the “march to mobile” is joined by businesses of ever decreasing size, meaning that if you aren’t yet hit by the wave, you very soon will be.

And you aren’t the first in your market or business class to be in discussion about it – virtually everyone in your position are thinking, talking, strategizing and/or executing against mobile.

Here are just a handful of companies across many markets that have both a desktop site and companion mobile site. By providing for both, they are successfully capturing visitors – in many cases, directly from their competitors – and retaining them for repeat visits by presenting them a usable site. Visiting them with a mobile device is a much different experience than visiting them via desktop/laptop.

• Amazon.com
• Facebook.com
• GNC.com
• Nike.com
• VW.com
• Staples.com
• ESPN.com
• HomeDepot.com
• Crutchfield.com

Do My Competitors Have a Mobile Website?

Some of them do.

And while we have no way to know for certain, statistics indicate that most of them have mobile strategies in place, under various forms of execution.

And virtually all of them are actively in discussion over present and future strategy with regards to mobile.

The latest data from Nielsen shows what we already knew - Android is the dominant OS (split among HTC at 15%, Samsung at 10%, Motorola at 10%, and the rest at 7%), iPhone is the dominant smart phone (28% of market), followed by RIM at a surpirsing 18%.

Android/iPhone dominates the market at 71%, leaving Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile behind. And in the past 30 days, they were responsible for 83 percent of all mobile apps downloaded.

Take all of the above and sprinkle in some ads, and Millenial Media's October report shows Android beating iPhone, RIM and Windows. While Apple's iPhone dominates mobile phone makers as the No. 1 phone in the market, Android phones dominate the share of ad impressions across mobile platforms.

But let's now shift to tablets. Apple sold 11.1 million iPads in the September quarter, accounting for about three-quarters of all tablets sold to consumers. This will put them at close to 75% of market share.

The conclusion to all of this? My favorite answer - it depends! But no matter what, it all starts with clearly defining who it is that you're trying to reach, what it is that most of them want...and give it to them!

Here's a snapshot of this morning's punch list.

• Draft a spec and estimate for a mobile site conversion, newsletter/eMarketing campaign suite, and online catalog that targets smart devices
• Issue a logo rev to a client
• Check status with the dev's on a couple of code forks (NB_Store, SmithCart) for some eCommerce initiatives
• Add/enable 600GB RAID Level 1 on one of the dedicated database servers; reconfigure the backup schedules to use the new storage.
• Finish and deliver a spec for a "video in the cloud" service that will pass cleanly through enterprise/corporate firewalls, optimize for the bandwidth of the requestor through adaptive bitrate, and sense the device (desktop, tablet, smart phone) to provide for the best user experience
• Fix some client discussion forums (ActiveForums) where some incorrect filtering was causing submitted code fragments to be mangled
• Investigate and resolve some bad page requests that were out of hand on a DNN 5 site
• Review some DotNetNuke World 2011 session videos
• Schedule some client training for SmithCart store administration
• Prep for a atratetgy meeting on member landing pages for an area health club

An opinion piece by Holman Jenkins that recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal was right on. The title was "Wi-Fi and the Mobile Meltdown," and was a story about how the distinction between the fixed and mobile networks is getting more blurry all the time.

Here's a great statistic that was cited. Jenkins writes, "Notice, for one thing, that the biggest deliverer of data to smart phones and related devices isn't any of the wireless carriers. It's Wi-Fi, which accounts for 33% compared to 8% for AT&T and 18% for Verizon."

He goes on to point out that "Mobile and fixed are converging, and doing so most obviously via the medium of Wi-Fi."

And near the end of the piece, admonishes the FCC to readjust their premise - that "When land is cheap, build out. When land is dear, build up."

If you think about it, it shouldn't matter what is being used to deliver the payload. And as a technology matures, such things become less and less relevant. Besides, end users largely don't care - they just want their data.

...

If you don't already have a ticket to Design Camp Boston on Saturday, November 6, you might be out of luck - tickets for the event are sold out. It's being held over at the NERD (Microsoft New England Research & Development Center) in Cambridge.

Design Camp is All About Creativity
Design Camp focuses on both current trends and future developments in web design and user experience across their many forms. Community driven, Design Camp Boston is a free, weekend-day event featuring some 18 sessions spanning web site design, frameworks, content management systems, motion graphics, standards, mobile applications, marketing, social media and more.

But if you are going, please stop in at my session:

Introduction to the DotNetNuke Portal/CMS Platform
See DotNetNuke – the leading web content management platform for Microsoft .NET, with 800,000 users and 600,000 sites in production. This open source, community-driven CMS should be considered for every web site initiative. For beginners or advanced users, you will come away with an appreciation for what DotNetNuke is capable of, and how to get started with using it to suit your needs.

There are some others that might be of interest too:

• Open Source Marketing Platform
• Abusing The Internet with CSS3
• Design for Change, It Makes Cents
• Design and Internet Explorer 9 – HTML5, CSS3, SVG, and More
• So you want a CMS? (Hint: It’s like picking a car.)
• Introduction to HTML 5
• Windows Phone 7 Application Design Primer
• Protoyping & Wireframing with Sketchflow
• Efficient UX workflow from design to development
• Designing Faster Websites
• Learn CSS…
• Building a User-Centric Company
• WordPress As A CMS
• SEO and the SEO Toolkit
• Designing with Balsamiq Mockups
• Joomla! for Designers
• Web Project Lifecycle

With the release of v5.5, we've decided to go pro in several different ways:

• All existing or new clients now have the option to have site(s) built using DotNetNuke Professional (v5.5 or newer)
• Any client currently running DotNetNuke Community (any version) now has the option to upgrade to DotNetNuke Professional (v5.5 or newer)
• DotNetNuke Professional licenses are now being offered on a "leased license" plan, saving you hundreds (and in the long run, saving you thousands) in licensing fees

Please contact us for more information on any of he above options.

There were an impressive list of attending groups, including our own DotNetNuke Boston User Group at this event, held at the Microsoft's NERD (Northeast Regional District) facility in Cambridge. Thank you Microsoft and O'Reilly Media for your ongoing sponsorship and support!

The event is designed to foster ideas and sharing of knowledge among user group leaders from the northeastern U.S. in an unconference fashion - driven by attendees and evolving as the day goes on and new ideas emerge.