So I was talking to a client today who asked me about Mobile Ready Websites and the “mobile” version of her site, wanting to know how we could customize it a bit more, and whether we could change the user experience for different mobile devices. The answer to each of these questions was “yes”, but what I started thinking was that the entire issue of building mobile sites has become a bit convoluted with many a web developer (or sales / project manager) not even really understanding what they are asking for. Instead, having a “mobile” or “mobile-ready” website has become just another buzzword, like “social media”, Web 2.0″ and “blogging” have in years past.

Whenever buzzwords like Mobile Ready Websites and the like pop up, I like to encourage my clients to stop for a moment – take a deep breath, and ask themselves “why”?

Depending on who I am talking to, I find that about 95% of the time the answers to that “why” question fall into one of three categories:

1. They (or their client) want distinctly different Mobile Ready Websites of their site so that their site visitors have a better website experience “or something”. They don’t necessarily know what that experience is, but they think it matters… and sometimes it does.
2. They have heard that Google is adding (or has added) Mobile Ready Websites to their search algorithm, and they want to make sure they don’t run into any issues. And this is perfectly valid and a pretty savvy answer (we’ll get back to this in a bit).
3. They honestly don’t really have a cohesive answer about Mobile Ready Websites… they just think they need one because they heard somewhere that they did, and usually they give some sort of mildly embarrassed smile while they answer. This comprises the most common “response” I get by far.

Here’s the thing – people speak in these generalities and with this vagueness for good reason – the mobile device market itself is still an emerging market in and of itself, and standard haven’t yet been established for a number of reasons. As we sit here at the end of 2011, the mobile landscape is reminiscent of the web site landscape circa 2000 or 2001… it’s beginning to develop, but it’s really in its infancy. Therefore, it’s pretty natural to understand why most folks aren’t really sure what they are asking for.

So let’s look at what makes a site “mobile ready”, shall we?

What Do You Pragmatically Need To Make Your Mobile Ready Websites happen?

So what do you really need to do to make your Mobile Ready Websites? Honestly, not a whole heck of a lot… it’s more about what you shouldn’t do than what you should do. Follow these simple rules:

1. Use modern web development techniques and technologies such as CSS and accessible design. Avoid table layout development (and seriously, if you are still doing table-based designs, 2005 called and even IT doesn’t want it’s antiquated techniques back).
2. Don’t use Flash. Seriously. Flash is bad. If you genuinely need more information as to why, post a comment and we can talk about it.
3. Keep your sites fairly lean from a file size perspective. Again, this is something that most developers do by default these days, but it’s a good rule of thumb to keep in mind.

Honestly, that’s the vast majority of what you need to worry about if you are a salesperson, project manager, or developer in the small to medium sized enterprise market. Do these things and your site will be mobile friendly – that is, it will be viewable and have a reasonable experience for mobile web site users according to Google. Which brings us back to Google (told you that we’d make it back there).

It is true that there is serious speculation that 2012 will see Google’s search algorithm log severe penalties against websites that give their users poor experiences by lacking Mobile Ready Websites, and that realization is beginning to cause a bit of panic and commotion amongst the SME development set. That said, what’s important to recognize is that it doesn’t mean you need a mobile site for your website. Instead, it means that you have to make sure that your website doesn’t suck on mobile devices… and those are two very different things.

Next week, I’ll talk about Mobile Ready Websites in more direct terms of WordPress… what plugins are available and are worth your time, which plugins are not worth your time (in my humble opinion), and again… when to worry about creating a separate mobile website at all.