Most companies today have a “regular” website, but the new frontier is the mobile web. This is the Internet as viewed on your cell phone. Very few businesses today have a website that can be easily viewed on a mobile phone. But is this important for a local business?

Mobile websites are very different than traditional websites. Cell phones have small screens and as they access the Internet they cannot read “regular” websites very well. Cell phones require simpler websites, smaller in size and with few graphics. A separate mobile website is needed. Mobile websites are much smaller and have fewer pages. The message is much more focused to what your mobile audience wants to know.

The mobile web is lighter than the normal web. Desktops connect to the internet through a stable high speed connection. Cell phones by their nature have to connect on the move. Connections are transferred from cell-tower to cell-tower and are affected by carrier coverage. This makes mobile devices limited in bandwidth.

There is a tremendous variety of mobile phones today. They range from very small screens to the larger screen of the Smartphone such as the iPhone. This creates challenges to create website for phones with different capabilities, features and restrictions.