As with most things the answer is, “it depends.”

The biggest factor in deciding if you need a mobile version of your site or not is your statistics. If 30% of the people visiting your site are on a mobile device, then you absolutely need a mobile version of your site. If your site is like ours and 1.77% of our traffic (iPad, iPhone, Android, iPod) comes from mobile operating systems (see graphic below), then it may not be worthwhile. In fact, we don’t have a special mobile version of our site because of these statistics and honestly we’re slammed with client work to spend time on it. The ROI for us to build a mobile version so that a very small percentage of our website visitors get a mobile-optimized site is just too low.

So when you consider creating a mobile version of your website consider your specific audience. Not every website attracts users using mobile devices and so the ROI of a mobile version of your website may not be worthwhile.

One mistake we’ve seen on some websites is an overly complicated web form. In particular, we’ve seen some forms ask for some really unnecessary information. For example, if someone has a general question about your businesses services, why would you require them to provide their address? Many people see this as asking for very private, sensitive information. As a result, they may be likely not to fill out the form at all.

When putting together a form, think about what the minimal pieces of information you need from the user. Do you really need a person’s address to answer a simple question from a prospective new customer? 99% of the time – no. In general, you want to make your form as simple as possible for a user to fill out as this will make it much more likely the user will fill out the form.

However, there are instances where you want to collect a lot of information from a person without trading emails. This is the reason we have a general contact form and a website quote request form. The general contact form is much more simple – this is to be used for general questions. The website quote form is intended for people who know they want a website and are ready to get a cost estimate. In order for us to give an accurate cost estimate, we need to know all that information in the form.

So as you build your forms, make sure not to over complicate them or you risk losing potential new customers. This goes with anything on a website – the more complicated the less likely it will work.

What prompted me to write this blog post is our very first client: Soma San Diego, a local San Diego concert venue that is very popular with high school and college age kids. We are in the process of redesigning their website and rethinking their strategy in how they get the word out about the new concerts they are having and ultimately how to get more ticket sales. Up to this point, they have their concert schedule posted on their own site, a few general San Diego entertainment websites, and then their massive email list which people have subscribed to over the past 5 years or so.

Now, I’m no longer in their target age range so I went to my younger brother who is still in high school to ask him how do kids in high school communicate the most. I told him to email me if he comes up with any ideas. His response, “I don’t use email”. I was perplexed – so how does he stay in touch? Mostly text messaging and MySpace.

When we reviewed the visitor statistics for Soma, we noticed that their growth had flatlined – they had exactly the same number of visitors a year ago as they do today. Why? We did a little more digging and came to the conclusion that people used the website less and were hitting Soma’s MySpace page more. Soma had just thrown up a MySpace page because they heard lots of kids were on it – they haven’t really done anything to take full advantage of it.

So how does this affect our strategy for Soma’s website? It really turned everything upside down. Originally our focus was on revamping the website and creating a better email newsletter. But these two mediums turned out to be the least used method for the target audience. So instead, efforts are going to be focused on the way in which potential ticket buyers prefer to communicate: Text messaging and MySpace. Along with emailing out the newsletter, there are plans to allow visitors to sign up for text messaging alerts. Instead of having an informationless MySpace, we are going to try to get more people to “Friend” Soma’s account and use these friends to spread the word about new concerts through MySpace.

Understanding your audience is essential to any business, not just for your website.