Last May Magento announced Magento Mobile for iPhone, a powerful application that enables merchants to create unique, branded experiences for their customers on their iPhones.  In that time companies such as The North Face and Easton Bell Sports have built custom-designed mobile experiences that extend the power of their Magento stores to the iPhone.

Now Magento is expanding Magento Mobile to the iPad and Android platforms.  Like the iPhone version, Magento Mobile for iPad and Android enable merchants to create branded, native storefront applications that are deeply integrated with Magento’s market-leading eCommerce platform.  Now merchants can provide the best shopping experience possible to customers based on the device they are using.  And of course, Magento provides an industry-leading mobile web shopping experience for any customer that does not have your native application installed.

Who would have thought years ago that in 2010 tens of millions of worldwide Internet surfers will go online from their mobile devices, whether for everyday browsing or just for checking an email and so on? With mobile Internet getting more and more popular nowadays, it is a must that each and every website design firm create mobile-friendly websites in order to grab a piece of this market, whether we are talking about US companies or UK website design firms.

This article will showcase the best practices developers should use when creating a website that can be accessed from mobile devices as well.

1.      iPhone is not the only mobile device used for browsing

One of the biggest mistakes website designers are making is to check only with the iPhone if the website is perfectly viewable. they forget that the iPhone is not the only mobile device used for browsing. Forget about online emulators and check the website with  5-10 different mobile devices in order to get a perfect picture of it.

2.      Use sub domains for mobile version

Before creating the mobile version you might consider asking the client what visitors really search when they are on your website. When browsing from mobile people usually want to browse fast and find the exact information they are searching for, so it is imperative to clean the unnecessary content and keep it simple.

3.      Use small images

The smaller an image is the faster the site therefore better visitor satisfaction. Again, mobile users usually do not have the time to wait too much for an image to be downloaded so keep in mind that optimising images when creating a mobile website is a priority.

4.      Frames, cookies and Flash

While the iPhone has cookie support and so on, as we said above, not all people will use an iPhone for browsing favourite pages. Try to avoid using Flash, cookies and frames and also avoid fancy fonts that most cell phones cannot read.

5.      As always, WordPress

WordPress users always had an advantage over other platforms and it seems mobile sites compatibility issue can be easier solved with a plugin, the WordPress Mobile Plugin. As most plugins this is available for free and in a matter of minutes it will make a blog/website mobile friendly. But in the end, it all depends on the clients’ needs and if he would like a more fancy website then he will probably need a professional web design firm that can handle his requests.