Whether you love web enabled mobile devices or loathe them, one thing is undeniable: more than ever before, people are browsing the web on the go and 
it’s changing the way that people think about the internet as well as how site owners and builders approach web design. The ranks of smart phone owners grows every day and with it, the demand for websites which are accessible and offer the same functionality on mobile devices as they do on a desktop or laptop computer.
The immense popularity of the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android based phones along with other mobile devices which can access the World Wide Web has taken mobile web design from a relative rarity to something which businesses and web designers can no longer afford to ignore except at the peril of losing precious market share. Every website project now has to be considered in light of how it will work on mobile devices. There is a maxim in marketing and advertising to the effect that if you want to reach consumers, you have to go where the consumers are. For some time now, businesses have known that being online is a necessity and now, being mobile friendly has as well.
Like any kind of web design, designing sites for mobile devices is all about creating a user experience which will meet or exceed the expectations of consumers. There are a lot of different things to be considered as a site building project progresses, but the following three points are a good place to start and will help lay the foundation for a new mobile friendly site to have a successful launch.
1) Why do you need a mobile site?
This may sound like a question with too obvious of an answer to be worth asking, but give it some thought. Other than the fact that you want to attract your share of the mobile web browsing public, there are a few things which are commonly cited as reasons for needing a mobile friendly site.
You may need a new website and want to ensure that your site will have as wide of a reach as possible by making it accessible to the traditional desktop market as well as to mobile device users.
It may also be the case that you’re having an existing site redesigned and want to integrate a new mobile friendly website as part of the project and corresponding launch. This also makes it easier to offer visitors a more unified brand experience, since both the desktop and mobile sites will be built simultaneously, likely by the same team of designers and developers.
You may also have a site which is doing perfectly well as is, but want to have a mobile site built in order to give your business a better chance of getting the attention (and business) of mobile users.
In each of these cases, there are different approaches to take and a different set of considerations which will affect the planning and execution of your mobile web design project.
2) What’s the goal of the project?
Again, this sounds like a no-brainer, but there is far more to this than simply having a mobile friendly presence on the web. You need to have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish and a well defined set of priorities so that you can communicate exactly what you need to your web designer (or if you’re designing the site yourself, to give yourself a road map for the project). Setting priorities is important if you’re trying to translate an existing site to the mobile web, since it’s not usually possible to include every single feature of a traditional site in a mobile site due to space restraints and hardware limitations.
3) Look back before you leap forwards
If you’re redesigning your existing site along with having a new mobile site built or if you’re adding a mobile site to an existing one, then your web design plans should take into account how your customers currently access your content – if you’re using Google Analytics or other metrics trackers (which you should be), gathering this data and putting it to use to make a more closely integrated pair of websites should be relatively easy.
Make sure to note which web browsers and which mobile devices predominate in your traffic statistics, since designing your new mobile site to support the hardware and software which your visitors prefer helps you to prioritize design elements as well as design more effective pre-launch testing and fine tuning processes.
