Lately I have noticed folks touting their websites as “mobile friendly”. Naturally, I browse to their site on one of my mobile devices, only to find that the website isn’t designed or optimized for mobile at all. Generally, it is a relatively simple web design, stripped of any Flash. Really? Uh, ok. Let’s give it a whirl, just for kicks. The following is generally what I find:

• I have to do a significant amount of resizing, scrolling and scanning to find the information I’m looking for. Sometimes, it’s just too much work, so I leave before I get your message.
• Every time I load a new page, I have to go through that same process of resizing and searching and scanning. I’m starting to get frustrated.
• All of your functionality doesn’t work in my mobile browser. (How many mobile browsers did you test your friendly website against? My guess is one, Safari. Maybe.)
• Your Contact Us form (or some other form) isn’t working properly in certain mobile browsers. Do you know which ones they are?
• Oops! Your videos aren’t compatible. Dang.

Often, my feedback is met with, “We don’t think our audience is visiting our site on mobile.” I generally reply with three things:

1. Check your analytics and get back to me.
2. If you are sending links to your website via Facebook, Twitter, or other popular social media websites, you can bet that the folks clicking on those links are often on a mobile device.
3. What planet are you from?

I’m not trying to harsh anyone’s mellow here. But if your competition is providing an intuitive, easy-to-use mobile experience, I’m going to go hang out with them. Consider this, in 2011, mobile search will surpass PC search rates of 2007. Your target audience will be looking for you on their mobile devices, and some of your competitors are already providing outstanding mobile user experiences.

The reality is, soon your mobile friendly website won’t have many friends at all.

Later Gators.

SS

Sara Santiago is the President of Roll Mobile. She doesn’t think that mobile design and development should be hard to understand or hard to implement, and if one more person insists that it’s more important for their website to support IE6 than mobile browsers, her face might just melt off.

Follow Sara on Twitter: @SaraSantiago