Your goal with your mobile website is to create a peak user experience to your mobile base — getting them the information they need quickly and easily. If you do decide to create a mobile-only version of your website, here are a few things you’ll need to do:

1. Select a URL for the mobile site
There are four generally accepted conventions for the name of the mobile version of your site:
A) Get a top-level domain, unique from your current domain name, e.g., www.yoursite-mobile.com or www.m-yoursite.com or www.yoursite-togo.com
B) Create a custom subdomain to your current domain, e.g., www.mobile.yoursite.com or www.m.yoursite.com
C) Add a folder to your current domain, e.g., www.yoursite.com/mobile (this is the easiest option)
D) Get a .mobi top-level domain, e.g., www.yoursite.mobi

2. Include only the most relevant information on your mobile-only site.
A mobile version should include a subset of the information from your site. Include small bits of information that users can read in a short amount of time, e.g., while on a bus, in a taxi, or waiting for an appointment. You can include links to longer documents and large images on your regular site, but don’t include them on the mobile version.

3. Create a way to get to the mobile version, and a way to get back
Some visitors don’t like being served up a “stripped-down” version of your site and would rather have access to all the information contained in your real site. Detect whether someone’s visiting your site from a handheld device and redirect them to your mobile version. Once there, provide a clearly visible link to view the regular site in case someone wants more information than you provide on your mobile site.

4. Keep the navigation and page structure simple
Include only the navigation items that mobile users are likely to want, and keep it all in one column. You might want to have links to all information on the mobile site available on the home page so users don’t have to click deeply into your site. If you’ve kept the content on the mobile version streamlined, this list of navigation choices shouldn’t be unreasonably long.

Once you’ve created your mobile-only version of your site, be sure to test it on as many handhelds as you can. If you’ve done your job correctly, you’ll have created a site with a nice balance of functionality and content optimized for your mobile users.

It’s no surprise that Nielsen shows a dramatic increase of 36% in the number of mobile internet users worldwide over that past year. What may be surprising is that 14% of this group view sites exclusively on a handheld device, not on a desktop or laptop computer. As the number of mobile-only surfers grows, and mobile computing becomes a part of the daily routine, it will become more and more important to make sure your site provides a good user experience for everyone, no matter how visitors access your website.

So, how is developing a website for mobile devices different from developing a site for desktop computers?
If you’re using good web development practices, your adjustments should be minor. We’ll assume you’re already using web standards, optimizing your images for the web, creating an organized site with simple navigation, and providing clean copy for your visitors. Keep the three following ideas in mind and you’ll be well on your way.

1. Keep it simpler.
With slow download speeds on some mobile devices, you need to keep it small. Provide minimal navigation at the top of the page, limit use of large images, and provide a text equivalent for each image. Serve up information in small pieces over a series of pages. And, don’t have an auto refresh or anything that requires repeated downloads from the network.

2. Design with device limitations in mind.
Make sure your website doesn’t use any of the known hazards of mobile devices. Limit scrolling to one direction, don’t rely on fonts or colors as a way to distinguish between elements, don’t depend on cookies, make sure the site works well with or without CSS, don’t use pop ups, and avoid Flash and JavaScript.

3. Design with device capabilities in mind
Mobile devices do some things better than desktops  and laptops. For example, you can customize your site for mobile phones by making phone numbers dial when clicked.  Or, you might want to include capabilities to send and receive MMS and SMS messages on your site.

Test your site on as many devices as you can.
There is an ever-growing number of smartphone operating systems, each with its own web browser: The biggies today are Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Linux, iPhone, PalmOS, and the recently released Android OS. While you can run your code through a validator and check your site with online emulators, there’s no substitute for testing your site on actual handheld devices.

If you don’t have 6-7 extra smartphones lying around, don’t be shy—ask your friends to let you take a peek at your site on their phones. If you’ve done your job right and followed the three steps above, it should look awesome!

If you want more information, take a look at the the Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 guidelines, developed this year by the W3C, the international organization that develops standards for the web.