The gloves come with little plastic buttons on the tip of the thumb and index finger on both hands.  The plastic is made to activate the surface of your iPhone or Android.  You can type & swipe without having to take your gloves off.

If glove makers think enough buyers are looking for this feature does it suggest every business needs to be aware of this movement toward mobile devices and make it part of their marketing?

What might people be doing on their iPhone while exposed to temperatures that make it important to keep their gloves on?

• Getting into their cold car after work, after shopping, or upon leaving their hotel.
• Waiting at a train or subway station.
• Coming outside after a movie or some other performance.
• Picking up their kids from day care.

Business Insider published an article about the growth in mobile friendly websites, their importance, and design Oct. 28, 2011.  The link will open in a new window. Close it to return to this page.

Some key findings:

1. Search is the second most important use of  mobile devices.
2. 20-50% of the searches are looking for a local result.
3. The search strings are much longer meaning they have something specific in mind.

Since the only way visitors are going to arrive at your mobile device friendly website is via a redirect from your main site it might seem like their ranking in the search engines doesn't matter.  Of course, as with all things technology related, it's not quite that simple.

Duplicate Content issues.  Developing good content is hard.  You have to pay writers or put in the time yourself.  It is much easier to build websites if you copy everything from someone else.  The search engines know that so they always look for identical content and try to reward the site that created it.

However, your mobile friendly website is, in fact, sort of a duplicate of the most important parts of your main site.  That is why Google's assurance they are aware of the problem is important.  They have provided specific direction that sites in the form m.MyMainSite.com or MyMainSite.mobi will be recognized as Mobile device friendly sites and not apply duplicate content penalties.

SEO benefits.  The search engines want the best possible experience for visitors so they have said they reward websites which send mobile device visitors to pages tailored for their use.  In other words your main site may actually get a boost in the rankings because visitors with mobile devices are being handled in the best possible way.

How many extra customers would you need to pay for your mobile site?

The right domain name for your main website is a big deal.  Businesses spend time, money & energy thinking about the length, the keywords, and other factors they think will help their site rank well in the search engines.  Many choose to pay serious money to buy a dot come rather than settle for some other Top Level Domain (TLD).

Selecting a domain name for your mobile friendly website is much less difficult.  In fact, you may choose not to use another domain name at all.  Visitors are unlikely to even be aware your mobile friendly website is on a different domain.  They are not going to be typing it into their browser window.  Visitors will go to your main website which will automatically redirect them to the mobile site.  This will be invisible to most.  (The geeks might notice the domain change in their browser address box).

Below are some choices you have with some pros & cons for each.

Use the same domain but put the mobile friendly content into its' own folder.  For example www.MyMainSite.com/mobile.  This works if the webmaster responsible for your main site is also doing your mobile site.  It's probably not such a great idea if the responsible people are different.  There is lots of opportunity for one party to make changes that mess up the other.  Then you get to referee the geek fight over who was responsible.

Create a subdomain.  This is usually done by creating m.MyMainSite.com and Google has indicated they understand this, will not penalize it for duplicate content, etc.  Using "m" is just a convention; it could be anything.  With this arrangement the two sites can have different logins which prevents the conflicts mentioned above.  Your existing internet person or someone at your hosting company has to set this up because it requires access to the same name server (DNS) as your main site.

Register another domain.  There really is a TLD called mobi as in mobile.  It has not been especially popular, although that may be changing, so MyMainSite.mobi is probably still available.  I like this approach because I can register the domain & publish a draft mobile friendly site there without any active support from your internet support staff and/or access to your existing site.  Google has said they recognize this as another reasonable way to set things up.

This approach may cost a little more because you have an extra domain registration fee and another hosting account, but the charges will be minor.  If I build  your website these charges are include in my fee.

As someone who specializes in building mobile friendly sites for customers this works really well.  I already have hosting accounts with providers I know and trust, with control panels I have worked with for years.  When something goes wrong or changes are needed I can take care of things very efficiently.  I can't be accused of taking down the main site by doing something dumb.  The reverse is also true.  I don't have to worry about the main website support people "forgetting" I am there and taking me down.  I don't have to tip toe around unfamiliar systems to do my work.

The benefits are so compelling this is the only technique I use.

I would, of course, suggest you select me.  However, to help you feel good about that choice you will want to check out the competition.  I did that too.  In my case I was checking to see if I thought I could do a better job than the other guys.  Some of my decision was based on technical issues.  However, I did find one surprising test that can be used by anyone.

I did a Google search for some phrases like "mobile website designer", ""Best mobile website designer", and "How to design a mobile website".  I looked through the results and visited those that looked interesting.  There are some large companies with really impressive websites chasing business in this niche.  I'm sure many do good work.  And charge accordingly, of course.

For those that looked good my final check was to go to their website from my iPhone.  It seemed to me that any company which made it to the first page of Google search results for one of these phrases would have a mobile friendly site.  They don't.  In my mind that eliminates them as a serious competitor.  How can you brag on your skills and not even apply it to your own business? I think you should load any vendor you are considering on your mobile device and see  how it looks.  If their own site itsn't ready for prime (mobile) time they don't deserve  your business.

I suspect the problem is they couldn't stand to "dumb down" their site, with all it's nifty graphics, to run on a mobile device.  I understand the problem, but that's the reality at this moment in time.  The way you make a user friendly mobile device website with the hardware and software tools currently available is to eliminate all non-essentials, all frills, and all fluff.  You keep ONLY the essentials.

Of course there can be some debate about what is essential, which is where I come in.  My current sites generate over 50,000 page views per month, most from long tail searches.  That provides a lot of practice figuring out exactly what visitors are looking for.

Exactly how is a customer using an iPhone or android phone to visit your website different from the one using a desktop or laptop?  Compared to a desktop visitor the mobile device customer has a tiny screen, limited bandwidth, and poor environmental conditions.

Limited Screen Size:  The screen on my iPhone has a diagonal length of 3.5".  Even the original Osborn 1 computer, released in 1981,  had more screen real estate than that.  Modern displays have a lot more resolution of course, and can display images and text with more precision.  However, your customer's visual acuity limits how tiny letters can be.

Especially if a significant number of your customers are older it makes sense to keep your text larger and provide more contrast from the background.  This limits how much you can say, but there isn't much value to text  your customer can't read!

Limited Bandwidth:  If the customer is within reach of a We-Fi network bandwidth is not a big issue.  However, many mobile customers will be calling from their car, a shopping center, their hotel, etc.  They may very well be using their phone providers wireless service and their bandwidth may be severly limited.  That means it is important you site be very lightweight and fast loading.

Environmental conditions:  Your potential customer may be driving or a passenger in a moving vehicle.  That means there is a lot of bouncing around, sunlight, reflections, and distractions from others in the same car.  There may very well be an ongoing conversation about who likes what food, and what kind of restaurant they should be looking for.  You Really Really want your site to be the one that makes it the easiest to get those answers.

Setting up a second website to provide a good experience for mobile device users is not the ideal, long-term solution.  With two sites there is an issue keeping them synchronized and the hosting costs increase.  However, the technology to obviate the need is still a ways off.

Reactive CSS is a development of Cascading Style Sheets that responds to the size of the browser window in which the web page content is being displayed.  On a large monitor it displays the content one way.  On an iPhone it displays it much differently.  This kind of "reactive" response is obviously much better than having to sites.

Unfortunately, Reactive CSS, HTML5 and some of the other potential solutions are not really ready for prime time.  There are two reasons for that.  The technology is not mature and the cost of building sites that way is  high.  It might make sense for a huge mega site that generates a lot of income to move in this direction.  It's completely out of range for a small business site.

The mobile device facilitated sites we build have some awkwardnesses, but their huge advantage is they can be built quickly & affordably.

Mobile devices are limited by screen size, bandwidth, & processing power.  As a result the content they display needs to be very concise and limited to the bare essentials.  This is NOT the same as squeezing the content down to fit the screen.  The content needs to be heavily edited and re-formatted to support the fast, limited needs of the mobile user.

Projects are for mobile devices to become the web surfing tool of choice in the near future.  Desktop machines will always have their place, but small portable devices are more and more helpful.  The implication is business owners who want to reach their entire potential audience need to make their content mobile device ready.

Mobile devices are especially helpful when the user is away from home and needs immediate answers.  For example, they just got out of an out of town meeting and need to find a suitable restaurant.  Any nearby restaurant that has a mobile device friendly website is likely to be the beneficiary of such searches.

Finally, there are a significant number of people who are mobile device only.  This may be for financial reasons or something else, but the reality is they only use a mobile device.  It doesn't require visiting many websites to learn why they will STRONGLY favor the mobile ready sites.