The Android phone from Google, currently in version 2, has taken the mobile market by storm by outselling Apple’s iPhone in the third quarter. Apparently, there are a lot of consumers out there like me who want a good alternative to locking themselves into the Apple/AT&T paradigm. (Currently, iPhones are only available through AT&T.) Google filled that need by creating and opening up its portable Android operating system to numerous phone manufacturers and mobile service providers. So if you like your current mobile carrier, you can keep them and upgrade your current phone to an Android. This is remarkably similar to what Microsoft did in the 1980s when they licensed their Windows operating system to whoever wanted to build computers using their software.

But what about the phone itself? Does the Android’s functionality and ease of use compare with the slick and polished iPhone 4? The flat–out answer: No.

I have been using my Android phone for a couple of months now. I generally like it, as it’s great to be able to access the Internet and check instant messages and my email accounts anytime, from anywhere. But when I borrowed my partner’s iPhone to do some comparison testing, the difference in feel and performance was stark.

There are some things about the Android that have bothered me, like sometimes having to push the touch–screen buttons more than once when a single, light touch was supposed to work, but I was okay with that. It was only after using an iPhone that I realized how clunky the Android’s basic apps are (such as the email client and browser). The email interface is far easier and faster on the iPhone, as is switching views from one email account to another. The iPhone browser is also faster and more intuitive and can do things the Android cannot, such as resizing web sites designed for mobile browsers so they fill both the portrait and landscape screens perfectly. Switching from portrait to landscape mode on the iPhone is much smoother and faster.

Would I exchange my Android for an iPhone today if I could? No, because I don’t want to be locked into the iBox that is all things Apple. But would I recommend to the average person who wants the best smartphone available to buy an Android today? Definitely not. Google and its hardware partners have a lot of work to do before the Android can compete based on ease of use. But I have no doubt that day will come, and when it does, I think the Android OS will become dominant in the mobile computing world, just as the PC did many years ago in the desktop and laptop market. Until that day though, the iPhone is the hands–down winner.

Sooner rather than later, you will need to have a mobile version of your web site since a growing number of people will be accessing your web site from a mobile browser, whether they use an iPhone, Android phone, or other mobile platform.

The bad news is that your desktop web site version is hard to see and navigate using a smartphone. The good news is that creating a mobile version of your web site is relatively simple compared to all the work it takes to develop a full–fledged web site. Because mobile users have only a small screen at their disposal, your goal is to keep the design compact and easy to navigate.

If you use a smartphone to view a web site, you can easily tell whether the web developer made a version of the site tailored to the small–screen format. CNN’s website (www.cnn.com) is a great example. If you go to their site on your smartphone, you will be immediately redirected to their mobile version, which is made to fit on small displays. Special detection code can easily be added to your web site pages to redirect a user to your mobile version. For example, if you are using a smartphone to view this newsletter, when you click on this link to our web site, http://mangelsdorf.net, you will be redirected to our mobile version, http://mangelsdorf.net/mobile.

So what should you keep in mind when you create a mobile version of your web site? To sum it up, keep it simple:

• Select only the most accessed pages, and strip out all the fluff that makes a web site look pretty on a large screen, such as graphics and fancy navigation.
• When considering the content, imagine that you are looking at your site on a smartphone and include only the info you would be looking for as a customer.
• Be concise and brief. You don’t want the user to have to scroll and scroll to find the info they seek.
• Include links to your most important pages at the top of every page to make it easy for users to navigate your site.
• Put your contact info on every page and make it easy to find.
• Make sure your logo at the top of each page links back to your mobile home page because that is how most users know to "home."
• To make it easy for a user to view your main web site on a mobile device, include links to some of your most visited main web site pages at the bottom of every mobile page.
• Do not use Flash because iPhones, which currently have the largest market share of the mobile platform market, cannot render Flash.

The bottom line is that your mobile web site should have only the most important information about your business, and that information should be presented in a succinct and easy–to–navigate format.

Last year, when clients asked us if we recommended that they create a mobile version of their main business web site, we answered that we did not think it was essential. But since then, the number of visitors using an iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, or other hand–held device to view our clients’ sites has gone from an average of 3 percent to an average of 8 percent. One web site that we track is up to 18 percent of their visitors using a smartphone or tablet. (If you have Google Analytics set up on your site, we can tell you the percentage of your traffic coming from mobile devices and from which devices.) The mobile visitors to our clients’ sites view an average of 2.6 pages and stay approximately 1.5 minutes. Based on that information, we are recommending that our clients develop a mobile version of their main web site that is easy to view and navigate on a small screen.

Another question we are asked is if adding a mobile version of a main web site will help search engine results. The answer is not much, unless you create a huge mobile version of your site, which runs counter to the reason for having a mobile version. The point of having a mobile web site is to improve the users’ experience on a handheld device and to give them information in a smaller and shorter format that does not require squinting at tiny text, side scrolling, or enlarging snippets of text.

As the total number of smartphone users grows and more of your customers use their mobile devices to look for information on your site, it will become more and more important that you have a mobile version of your web site that is easy to view and navigate on a small, handheld screen.