A mobile presence is increasingly becoming relevant to businesses of all sizes. Google, Nokia, Opera, Blackberry, and Apple are bringing better web browsing experiences to mobile devices. SMS has exploded as a communication medium. Data is being delivered and refactored in numerous ways using things like XML, RSS, and Microformats Microformats. Even email on your mobile phone is opening new opportunities and challenges for your email marketing.

Mobile phones are owned and used by over 3 billion people the world over, and it is estimated that 30% of people accessing the internet do so only with a mobile device. . This does not include another 33% who access by both PC and mobile. This trend is only growing.

Mobile internet access will not make the PC internet experience obsolete anytime soon. A large portion of users will have both a PC and a mobile device and use both to access the internet. This brings up the true objective of a mobile presence, which is context. Users finding information stationary at a computer will have different goals and needs than that of a mobile user. Location based context on size-constrained mobile devices demands a different level of attention than web sites and applications accessed through a PC. Instead of miniaturizing your current web content you need to mobilize it. Users probably don't want to read lengthy documents, or extensively research your company on their mobile devices. But they do want to get your contact information for a quick phone call, get directions to your location, or login to a mobile specific version of your SAAS.

There are a few options for expanding your online presence in the mobile realm. Your website can already be accessed by an internet capable mobile device, although the experience may not be up to the same quality as if viewed on a PC. Basically there are 3 ways to go:

1. Do nothing. Mobile browsers will attempt to render your site as you intend it. Most have little to no support for presentational languages like CSS. If your site is still coded in old-school table-centric html, forget about it. Best case in this scenario is that your site is coded in clean, semantic (x)html and the content of your site is still readable when rendered on a small screen without CSS applied.

2. Make a mobile stylesheet. You have a site that degrades gracefully when stylesheets are not applied. For those browsers with better CSS support, you detect their device and serve up your same site content with a stylesheet that formats for a small screen. This can work well but does not address the importance of context. Your site's navigation and content may not be crafted for the needs of a mobile user. Digging through large navigations and using forms without the convenience of a mouse or trackpad can be frustrating, leading the user to abandon their whatever goals they had in visiting your site on their mobile device.

3. Craft a separate mobile site, with an architecture designed for mobile users. If you have demand from mobile users, this is the way to go. Rethink your sites goals and content within the context of the mobile user. Provide as many mobile hooks on your content as possible using SMS and phone number links. If you create web applications, think of tasks your users would want on the go and package them up in a mobile optimized version. Solutions tailored to the context of a mobile device will gain far more traction, and provide even more benefit to users.

Some more links for important mobile considerations:

People-centric Mobile Computing

W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group's Blog

Mobile Web Design by Cameron Moll

Mobile Web Development according to dotMobi

dotMobi's Device Atlas - Mobile Device statistics

Opera Software's Mobile Browsing Report

How SMS Works

The Mobile Marketing Association