It’s hard to miss the number of portable devices out there these days and the huge number of people who are regularly using them to visit websites. You don’t want to ignore this part of the market so it’s wise to think about making your site work well on these devices.

There are a couple of problems here. One is the limited resources (small screen, limited user input, etc) and the other is the vast range of devices that you need to support. Most of these devices demand some fairly major changes to your site layout and content to make it work successfully. This can be the biggest headache for you and your site.

One solution here is to pay attention to the market – the iPhone and iPod Touch now account for at least 0.23 percent of web traffic in the US. That may not seem a lot, but it’s a growing number, and it’s larger than the share of any other mobile browser. So it may be a wise solution to target your site just to these devices.

The good news here is that the iPhone has improved the user experience massively. It’s a joy to use and includes support for many web standards, such as XHTML, CSS2 and Javascript. The iPhone is able to do this because its browser is based on the Webkit Open Source Browser Engine (as do the Nokia N95 and Android phones).

This means that you really don’t have to make many changes to your site to get it to work on the iPhone. Great news. Of course the iPhone brings some amazing capabilities for browsing full-sized websites, with easy zooming and scrolling using the touch screen display.

If you want you can take this further and target your site more towards the iPhone: change the site so it’s more ’small screen friendly’, with button-style navigation and less use of zooming. This makes it more of an iPhone-like application (think of how iTunes looks different on the smaller display). Actually this can be a useful exercise in itself – can you distill your pages down into their key content, just focussing on headlines and titles?

The iPhone keypad is pretty good but still not as useable as a full-size keyboard, so it’s good to find ways to reduce the requirement for visitors to type in text.

Also why not explore some new capabilities that are unique to a mobile site? What can you do with an onboard camera? What about location information?

Even if you don’t dive headfirst into these fancy features, you should be able to create a good user experience for your site using the iPhone. By doing this you are making a decision not to target the older, less capable devices. In a way you are ignoring the long tail of multiple mobile browsers.

On the way to the mall to look at an iPod Touch the other night Chris Daughtry’s Over You was playing on STAR 101.3. I like the song and it was good to listen to on a sunny spring evening.

Playing with the iPod in the Apple Store I popped up iTunes and there was the track again. Of course I listened to it and it sounded great.

Driving to the airport today while thinking about this post I noticed a billboard by the freeway with Daughtry’s face on it and STAR 101.3. Then I saw an ad for the iPod.

Can you achieve this amount of consistency in your website and online presence? Before you stop me and say “wait just a second, you’re asking us to control the airwaves now?” – let me explain. You have many different places and channels where your online business gets seen. Are you doing your best to make sure that your message looks the same across all these?

1. Is your blog integrated into your site or bolted on with a completely different look and navigation?
2. Do all your pages have a similar look and feel and consistent navigation?
3. Do your autoresponder emails use the same style as the website?
4. Do they come from the same domain as the website or from a provider with a different address?
5. Do the emails work with the message of your website?
6. Do you provide support and is this as friendly and helpful as the website?
7. If you talk to customers on the phone are you as helpful as your website says you are?
8. Do your online adverts share a consistent message or do they just grab visitors (and disappoint them when they reach your web pages)?

You may not have the marketing reach of iTunes and the airwaves but you have a number of channels that you can control. If you can make your messages consistent then they build on each other and reinforce each other and provide a better overall experience for the customer.

My experience with the iPod was enhanced by seeing and hearing consistent, familiar messages in places that I wasn’t expecting. Because it made the experience better it made it more likely that I would buy the iPod (I did).

The only thing I haven’t done yet is download the song from iTunes

I hope Apple will put Wordpress on the iPod touch too since the WiFi lets you use it online.

If you have multiple websites or multiple products then a great way to increase their buzz and value is to make them work better when they work together. How about a Florida vacation rental website and a book about saving money when you visit Walt Disney World?

It’s time to step away from the computer and think about how you can make two plus two equal more than four for your website…