Lately I’ve been pushing mobile internet pretty hard. Now that Admob is claiming 15 million iPhones in the US and Android has 1.5 million units in circulation in the US, the rich mobile web experience is becoming more and more popular. Many people have stopped turning on their desktop computers. Can you say ‘Hello iPad?’

So I’ve been diving in like a madman. I’ve been installing emulators for all the smartphones I can’t afford to own and I’m building a list of friends with different phones for testing.

Developing web sites for desktop computers was fairly simple.  There were 3 platforms (Linux, Mac & PC) and each had maybe 4 different browsers (such as Firefox.) The average desktop has a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels. As of 2006 56 % of the population  has access to high-speed internet. Many web developers count on this to produce lazy sites that load slowly and require giant screens. In contrast, the iPhone has 480-by-320-pixel resolution at 163 ppi.

User-interface heavy-hitter Jakob Nielsen posted the results of a study that documented the many user experience challenges that developers face. Surfing the Mobile Internet there are hundreds of handsets. One or two browsers on a platform and connection speeds vary wildly.

At Focus Web Works, I have embraced this challenge. The Mobile Internet is clearly the future. If you want to join us there, give me a call.

-Nohl  520/399-8850

When you are deciding how to spend you business dollars, how are you making your decision?

What you should be doing is asking questions and making notes. “How did you hear about us?” This tells you which of your ads or web sites are working for you.

Once upon a time, everyone said, “yellow pages.” Now, I don’t know more than one or two people who still rely on that medium. If you deal primarily with younger customers – downsizing your Yellow Page ad will save some serious green.

If you get lots of business by referral, how can you reward people for their support? For many people, the reward is to continue the quality of service that made them appreciate you in the past.  Some sort of carrot is still a nice way to say, ‘Thank you.”

If you are using multiple ads, do you know which ads bring in the most money? Make sure that your entire customer service team asks, “How did you hear about us?”

One method that we can help with is to setup different web pages for different promotions. This will help you track which promotions drove the most traffic to your web site.

Remember: a business without advertising is like smiling at someone pretty in a dark room. You know what your doing, but nobody else does.

Nohl