blog.mobi

I came across some really comical blogs on the NamePros site during the past weeks commenting that "Edwards should be flipping burgers at Burger King" and "Edwards is that guy with the really bad red tie." I love flipping burgers on the grill, but I have to say that I do like my red tie. I love the good craic as we say here in Ireland, but I think the discussion needs to be more about how to build mobile content. You can buy all the names in the world that you want, but they are worthless without content and traffic to them. Content and traffic are important whether you are an individual, big brand, small brand or domain investor.

The big brands are doing it daily in the press. dotMobi is about helping the small and big brands alike to reach 1.6 billion internet-ready mobile phones around the world. This is where the future traffic lies for small businesses, big brands and pay-per-click sites. If you are not there today, then you are going to be late to the game in the next 12 months. I am often asked what are the minimum requirements for a dotMobi site and, more importantly, what makes a good dotMobi site.

The minimum requirements for any web site behind a mobi name are brain-dead simple. Most registrars and their tools implement these requirements today. We built the minimum mandatory rules with help from the W3C and dotMobi’s investors so that consumers would get a mobile experience that works every time. You can run a Ready.mobi report to find out if your site meets the three simple rules. If you want to build a site with GOOD mobile content, then you need to do a little more work and read on past the rules below. 

The three rules are:

1.  XHTML Mobile Profile

XHTML mobile profile is simply a tag for your mobile landing page, signifying that your site does XHTML (the preferred language for mobile web browsers). It makes sense that your web site should tell the browser to select a mobile display. Mobile browsers will take on a number of behaviors, and your web site should signal what kind of behavior it wants the consumer to experience. This rule is mandatory and .mobi sites not implementing it will be turned off with due notice before the year end.

2.  No frames

The zero to nine keypad on mobile phones do not provide an easy way for a consumer to navigate around a mobile web site. Frames also tend to break mobile browsers in some cases. Hence, we have a mandatory rule that says no frames because it produces a bad mobile experience for the consumer. This rule is mandatory, and .mobi sites not implementing it will be turned off with due notice before the year end.

3.  myname.mobi must be the landing page

This is another practical rule guaranteeing consumers that they do not have to worry about what comes before the name. Was it "www" or "whatever 3rd level name"? Mobile consumers on the go do not have time to type lots of characters on a zero-to-nine key pad. dotMobi makes it simple for the mobile consumer to get to the site they want quickly and dependably. We did research on this mobile consumer behavior, by the way, and this is how we created the rule. This rule is mandatory, and .mobi sites not implementing it will be turned off with due notice before the year end.

The three rules are simple and practical, but they do not mean you will produce a mobile site with a great consumer experience. dotMobi and the investors (the guys with the real mobile web experience) have literally spent the last two years and several million dollars building information resources and tools for free to the global community. You should check out Dev.mobi today to learn about how to build a web site with a great mobile experience. 

I will summarize some of the highlights that will help you build a world class mobile site that will work on any phone or network in the world …

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