5 ways to create a great mobile web site

(Editor’s note: Steve Ives is co-founder and CEO of Taptu Ltd, a mobile search company based in Cambridge UK. He contributed this story to VentureBeat.)

During the last year, the number of mobile Internet users in the U.S. has doubled to 22 million people. At the same time, according to dotMobi data, the number of mobile-friendly Web sites has quadrupled.

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The mobile-friendly Web is now serious business – and a lot of companies are realizing they’re not prepared. That could be costing them money, as the demographics of touch-screen phone owners (such as the iPhone or Blackberry Storm) are alluring to advertisers, since they usually boast higher-incomes than ‘dumb phone’ users.

To a large degree, this growth in the mobile Web has been catalyzed by the popularity of the iPhone, whose users take advantage of mobile search over 20 times more frequently than owners of ordinary phones, according to Google.

But the iPhone and iPod Touch, with 40 million users, are just a small percentage of the over 200 million touch screen devices shipped in the world last year. And the rapid growth of touch phones is leading to an exponential surge in mobile Internet traffic, including mobile Web sites.

At Taptu we have created a search engine that crawls and indexes mobile Web sites that are optimized for touch devices. Our most recent count puts the number at over 100,000.

That number is only going to grow, meaning if you want your company to remain competitive, creating a Web-optimized site is something that needs to move up the priority list. Here are five simple ways to get it done.

1. Slim down your pages: Page sizes on the traditional Web range from 300 KB to (in extreme examples) 3 MB. A typical mobile Web page is only 30 Kbytes. Slimming down pages is essential. 3G often doesn’t match broadband in real-world conditions – and the mobile carriers aren’t going to be able to fix this any time soon. 4G – which will more closely match PC broadband – is coming, but it won’t be soon – due to its cost.

2. Optimize navigation for touch screens: The dimensions of your desktop monitor and touch phone are dramatically different. Most smart phones compensate for this by letting users pinch and zoom in on content, but it’s not an optimal experience. It’s important to design your site to be “finger-friendly”. Reduce the visual complexity of the site to improve usability – and make your tap zones wide enough to avoid selecting two links at once.

3. Don’t compromise the content: Several leaders in the desktop space have created mobile sites that skimp on the reasons people visit them in the first place. On the PC-based MySpace.com site, for example, a key part of the user experience is the ability to stream songs from your favorite artist. The mobile version lacks this, giving users one less reason to visit. Spotify – a streaming music service based in Europe – has taken the opposite approach, giving you more on mobile. Not only can you stream all the music you want via the service, but you can also download it to your phone and play it offline (for a monthly fee).

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4. Be creative: A generic mobile site, consisting of nothing more than links and a logo doesn’t do anybody much good. Within the 25-50KB ideal page size, there is ample opportunity for branding and creativity. Use it.

5. Monetize from the outset: Mobile advertising networks like AdMob have already created mobile ad formats that are optimized for the iPhone and other touch devices. If your business model is advertising-based, you should design mobile ads into your site from the outset. This allows you to learn quickly and effectively which factors influence click-through rates and revenue-per-click.