By now, you must have heard of the .mobi domain extension which stands for “mobile”. This extension has been available for use since 2006 and has yet to catch on, but if you read on below you will see that this domain extension just never really had a chance and was suggested by people without enough foresight into the future of the web and mobile browsing.
If you where wandering whether your business should invest in a .mobi version of your website, well, the answer is NO!
The entire point of a .mobi domain was originally intended to create a “sister website” for a company so as to create a “mobile version” of their website. This would be a mobile website that would be optimized in size, shape, form and function to appear properly on mobile phones and other small portable devices.
Then last year something very simple and significant happened that made this all pointless. The iPhone!
The iPhone allows its users to brows any normal website intended for a computer browser like Fire Fox or Internet Explorer and acts similar to a regular PC/Mac based internet browser. With the iPhone, no one needs a .mobi or “mobile” only website anymore. They only need a regular .com or .net website which most companies already have. The iPhone actually killed the .mobi purpose.
And since all phone manufacturers are currently launching touch screen smart mobile phones with very similar (or even better) feature than the iPhone, there is now no use for the .mobi extension so I would say you can safely let these drop if you had registered a hole bunch of these for your online businesses. Actually, since not everyone knows this, you may even get a good price for these domains still on auction if you do not wait to long.
So what does that mean to you? Simple, do not waste company resources and company money creating “mobile” websites just for mobile users to access. Instead, I would suggest you place your focus on local search marketing (local SEO) because this is a very fast growing industry that will soon be of great significance to online business (if not already!).
When you think about it, mobile users are often in a “need to buy it now” phase if they are searching for a product online from a mobile phone or portable devise right? They are searching on the go and they are looking for something now and something probably very close to them like a local restaurant of information office or the closest location of the product they are seeking.
So the clue here is not a specialized website, but having your website optimized so that when a potential client searches your product or service, they find you first in your area!
The key to this can be summed up by the term “local search marketing” which is something I will want to touch on regularly within my blog so my advice is expend your resources on developing that area and don’t worry about .mobi or developing websites specifically for the mobile user.
Hope this helps a few of you out there fighting the never ending online marketing battle.
Look at the iPhone commercials. Every commercial I have seen has a mobile website being displayed (and a zagat.mobi). There is a need for mobile websites. People can’t stand reading full websites by zooming in and out, and panning around to actually read the text. That’s why Apple promotes mobile website for the iPhone!
Until projectors come out for the cellphone there will be a need for mobile websites. You just can’t fit a website made for big screens into a small phone.