I had seen commercials for telepresence technology, but was skeptical. It seemed like an unnecessary extravagance when simply video teleconferencing technology would suffice.

I was wrong.

Earlier today I participated in my first telepresence meeting. This Cisco technology puts your remote participants directly across the table from you. The sound quality is amazing, and the levels make the remote participants sound like they are actually in the same room. The sound even emanates from the location of the speaker; when the fellow on the left speaks, the sound comes from the left. It’s an immersive experience where you quickly forget that the folks across the table are actually across the Atlantic!

How does telepresence compare to traditional video teleconferencing? I’ve been in many of these video telecons, but they pale in comparison. Often the screen is so crowded and the people so small that you can’t tell who is talking. Sometimes it’s difficult to even distinguish who is who! They are a weak substitute for face-to-face meetings, but in a time where businesses are rightly watching their budgets, they have become a necessary evil.

In contrast, the telepresence technology is so immersive that when one of the remote participants dropped a sheet of paper, one of my local colleagues instinctively reached to pick it up, only to realize that it was thousands of miles away.

Effectively, Cisco TelePresence has killed old school video teleconferencing for me.

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Saturday was my adjustment day in Abu Dhabi, having travelled eleven time zones from LA, arriving late Friday night. My colleague Tom and I ventured out to visit Ferrari World on the outskirts of town.  We looked forward to staking claim to riding the world’s fastest roller coaster – the Formula Rossa, which hits speeds of 240km/h.

Ferrari World is impressive in size and ambition, but the lack of crowds made us wonder how long it would remain open. For starters, three of the most popular attractions were closed for maintenance — including the world’s fastest roller coaster. Bummer.

We ambled over to the one roller coaster that was open, and were the first two in line. In fact, we were the only two in line. We had to ask to double-check that it was even open (it was). We navigated the serpentine (but empty) queue designed to handle mobs of people and made our way to the ride. We were the only ones on the first trip around the track. When we returned, there was still no line, so we went back. From there on, we didn’t even get off, we just asked them to keep sending us around. We rode it four consecutive times before finally a few people started to filter in.

The crowds did grow a bit over the afternoon, but it was never crowded. And we were both a little disappointed that three of the key attractions were closed (not a good sign).

On the bright side, I did learn a lot about Ferrari and saw some beautiful cars – some historic and many new models. But the experience left me scratching my head and wondering about the business viability of the park.

And while I can’t claim to have ridden the world’s fastest roller coaster, I may be able to say… “I visited Ferrari World back when it was still open.”

All this got me thinking; putting aside questions about whether it’s the right thing to do or not, let’s assume that the objective is to make changes that would help Ferrari World thrive. What changes would help them grow?

One obvious omission was the lack of a Ferrari dealership. Let qualified buyers test drive a Ferrari on the adjacent Formula 1 track (the Yaz Marina Circuit). Let people pickup a new car brochure and dream a bit. Even though the car’s price puts it out of range for most people, I was shocked that this wasn’t there. The “world” was a bit incomplete. You couldn’t even find out how much they cost (at least, it wasn’t apparent).

How would you crank up the buzz and stimulate business?

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And so…

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that like Starbucks, and those that don’t. I love Starbucks.Yes, it’s pricey, but I usually visit my local Starbucks on El Camino two or three times a week. My girlfriend would probably guess more frequently, but I’m not ready to admit to that.

I just unlocked the "Starbucks Tribute" badge on @foursquare! http://4sq.com/hXltsx

March 10, 2011 8:01 am via foursquareReplyRetweetFavorite

@jeffhester

Jeff Hester

This week Starbucks is celebrating their 40th anniversary. Regardless of what you think of their coffee, you have to respect that they’ve done a few things quite well from a business perspective. In conjunction with their 40th anniversary, they rolled out their new logo. It’s not really all that new — but more of a modification. Essentially they stripped out the band with the text that read “Starbucks Coffee,” leaving only the siren.

There was an uproar when they announced the new logo back in January. Some of my designer and marketing friends were up in arms over the new design. “Big mistake” was the consensus. Now that it’s here, I don’t hear much from anyone. Certainly it didn’t seem to reduce the morning lineup at Starbucks. It didn’t confuse, confound or bother the average customer at all. Either they didn’t notice, or didn’t really care. If they did notice, it was a novelty — “Oh, look! They changed the logo!” A sort of positive vibe that keeping it fresh provides the brand.

Mark Hurst profiled Starbucks in last week’s Good Experience newsletter. He notes that the formula that drove success at Starbucks began to falter a couple years ago, but they’ve appeared to turn this around. CEO Howard Schultz explained to the Wall Street Journal how they turned things around. “Putting our feet in the shoes of the customer…” was his key message. Note that the average customer wasn’t bothered by the logo change. The noise generated by the design and branding community was simply that — noise.

Last week at Linked OC, Seth Godin shared an interesting anecdote about Starbucks. He noted that when they originally opened, they did not sell coffee. They sold coffee beans, but not coffee by the cup. The formula faltered until they brought in a new CEO who brought in the idea of serving espresso drinks such as he had seen in Italy, and the rest is history.

Where is all this headed? Well, we’ve established that I like Starbucks. Two out of my three offspring have worked for Starbucks (one still does). And Starbucks, in spite of all their success was not and is not immune to mis-steps, either. The key has been, and remains — keeping the customer in mind.

So then, who is your customer? And are they on your mind?

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“Imagine that the world had no middlemen, no publishers, no bosses, no HR folks, no one telling you what you couldn’t do.

If you lived in that world, what would you do?

Go. Do that.”

Godin is a terrific speaker, very relaxed and personable as he skillfully balances enlightenment and entertainment. I won’t repeat his talk (Ricardo Bueno put together a great recap), as you can get even more from his book. What really intrigued me was the Q&A afterwards, particularly when he described his Domino Project.

What is the Domino Project?

The question came from the audience after his talk. Seth spoke passionately about how he felt the publishing industry has lost it’s way. “Bookstores are dead,” Godin boldly declares. Not dying. Not hurting. Just dead. So he partnered with Amazon, who happens to sell a few books directly to consumers, and has some interesting data about those sales.

From Amazon, Godin learned that a majority of sales of his last best seller were to customers who bought in multiples — two, three, five or more copies of his book. Godin’s books are unique not only for their content, but their form factor. They are small, compact packages that can easily be absorbed in a long plane flight and passed on to a friend, making them well-suited for multiple purchases.

The Domino Project changes the formula. Instead of publishers selling to bookstores (who aren’t really the customer), Godin leverages Amazon to sell directly to consumers. Instead of one size fits all, you can order Poke the Box in no less than ten different formats and packages. You can get the Kindle version for a mere $4.99, or a pack of 52 hardcover versions for $341 (and everything in-between).

Godin even points out the the front cover of the book has no text on it. No title, author or marketing speak. Just a clever, retro-looking chap who looks excited. A colleague or friend who spies it sitting on your table is compelled to inquire “what is this?” Godin’s austere cover is irresistible book bait.

It’s still to early to tell whether Godin’s gamble will be a success, but I’m betting he’s at least on the right track. He says that early sales figures are 5x that of his last best-selling book.

With his Domino Project, Seth Godin is practicing what he preaches in Poke the Box.

What box are you poking?

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This face-to-face KM immersion did two things:

First, it allowed them to focus on what they where learning, without the distractions of the everyday office activities around them. Sitting and working side-by-side with the KM team gave them an opportunity to really absorb a great deal of knowledge that wasn’t necessarily a part of the training outline.

But the second, and even more important result was the relationships that were built. In most cases, this gathering was the first time we worked together. In addition to spending most of the work week together, we would eat lunch together and even go out afterwards for dinner or go sailing. The bond that formed provided a solid foundation for an ongoing working relationship. They felt comfortable coming to us because they knew us well. They trusted us, and knew we were there to help them. They understood the gravity of their new role as knowledge managers. They reached out for help or to brainstorm solutions for integrating knowledge management into their community’s work processes, and gladly participated when we asked them to help us with an enterprise KM initiative.

Doing this via video teleconference has required a change in approach. Sessions are shorter, with more pre-reading and pre-work. There are exercises that require multiple touch points with the KM team, ensuring that they will talk with someone on the team on a fairly regular basis. Will this suffice? Not a chance.

Fellow KM-er David Gurteen recently shared a great article on Harvard Business Review via this tweet:

Why Face-to-Face Meetings Make All the Difference http://bit.ly/heOt6i

February 18, 2011 6:39 am via bitlyReplyRetweetFavorite

@DavidGurteen

David Gurteen

In his article Why Face-to-Face Meetings Make All the Difference, Stephen Greer describes how use used face-to-face meetings to build and strengthen relationships with his leadership team. Greer concedes that after the relationships had been established, he was able to reduce the frequency of meetings, and conduct more of them remotely.

“Over time, once personalities gelled and relationships bonded, we were able to scale back the frequent flyer miles by making it a quarterly face-to-face meeting, with monthly conference calls in between. Today a videoconference would be the preferable alternative, as technology is definitely bringing distant operations closer together.”

Note that he didn’t jump straight away to conference calls. He notes that it took time to build and bond relationships with face-to-face meetings. Only after those relationships were bonded could they scale back the frequency and begin leveraging alternative technology like video teleconferencing.

Yes, face-to-face still matters.

The challenge is this: What do you do when face-to-face is not an option? How do you build those relationships that are necessary to create trust between people who don’t really know each other that well?

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Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising

While it’s sure to make you smile, especially if you’ve been involved in advertising or even commercial web projects, TPDSAA has a very real point. Too often we miss the mark when trying to communicate. We spend too much time on minutiae, and make too many assumptions that “we” know what our audience wants because we think they are just like us.

We Are Not Our Audience

Whether “we” means an ad agency, design firm or an individual simply trying to stake their claim on the Internet, “we” are not the same as everyone else. In fact, everyone else is very different from us. We are too close to the subject to see it through the eyes of the average visitor.

Over and over I’ve heard anecdotes of people recruiting their mom as the ultimate usability tester. The assumption is, if mom gets it, everyone will. Honestly, this is not far from the truth. We need to interact. We need to be genuine. We need to ask — our visitors, employees, members or customers — what they really need and want. And then, we need to give it to them.

I’m not suggesting design by committee, or worse, design by community. There is still a need for vision and creativity. Our experience and knowledge can help create a user experience that delights. Doing so requires a combination of that know-how and a willingness to listen and adapt to genuinely serve the audience.

Check out TPDSAA. I guarantee you will find at least a few photos you’ll relate to. And if you’re in a position to influence user experience, think about how you can avoid ending up lampooned on TPDSAA.

Looking to improve user experience? Here’s two companies I recommend:

• Adaptive Path provides a range of consulting services to help companies improve their user experience, as well as coordinating a series of events and conferences for user experience professionals.
• Creative Good also provides consulting services for companies who want to improve the user experience, supplemented by councils — groups of peers sharing their knowledge and expertise. The annual GEL conference (Good Experience Live) draws a range of creatives in a format closer to TED than an typical conference.

Meantime, I’m thinking about how I can apply the humor of TPDSAA to the realm of knowledge management. Stay tuned…

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On March 2, Seth will be speaking at Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. The event — organized by Bryan Elliot as part of Linked Orange County – is a great opportunity to hear from the innovative thought leader who usually is only seen at exclusive events like TED. Tickets are available now, and this is likely to sell out.

I’ve read several of his books, including The Big Moo, Small is the New Big, and Linchpin. He has a way of cutting through the crap and addressing your customer (be they internal or external) in a whole new way. Check out all of Seth Godin’s books (affiliate link).

What’s your take on Seth Godin? Let me know if you going on March 2, and I’ll make a point to say hello.

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LinkedIn Labs has introduced InMaps – a visualization of your LinkedIn network. I first heard about InMaps via a Tweet from fellow #SMMOCer Mel Aclaro. LinkedIn wisely made sharing easy, and so a quick search will find plenty of fresh tweets about this as people discover the new feature.

I gave InMaps a quick spin and quickly discovered LinkedIn’s not-so-subtle ulterior motive: You can’t create a visualization unless you have at least 50 connections and your profile is at least 75% complete.

I’ll bet you a cold beverage that LinkedIn enjoys an sudden surge in both profile completion and network connections as a result.

For LinkedIn, it’s a brilliant move. By offering something sexy that people want (the groovy diagrams) but requiring them to step up and engage on a deeper level, the entire network wins. And (theoretically) they drive the behavior that they want from their community — people sharing deeper knowledge about their experience and connections.

How can we bring change to our community/organization/business/world? One small incentive at a time.

If you care, you can check out my visualization, create your own, or connect with me on LinkedIn.

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“Failures don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan.” – Harvey MacKay

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

These quotes share a common thread and illuminate a problem that is far too common. I see it in companies struggling to implement knowledge management. I see it in communities of practice. You can find it in businesses, organizations, clubs, and even the personal lives of people we care about.

The problem? The absence of a plan.

Historically — and with comic certainty — the gyms overflow in January as we collectively resolve to shed those holiday pounds and get healthy. By the end of the month, the crowd subsides and it’s back to business as usual. What happens? Do people decide that they really don’t want to lose the weight they tacked on? Do they discover that their health really isn’t that important to them? No, the problem is that they have a goal in mind (i.e. lose weight), but only a vague idea of how to get there. What they lack is a plan.

Goals are good and necessary. Goals give us something to strive for, and achieving our goals — be they personal or professional — are largely how we measure success. To get from where you are to where you want to be, you need two things: a goal that is well-defined and measurable, and a plan that — if followed — will help you reach that goal.

The Power of Planning: A Personal Illustration

For years, I had a long-standing goal to hike the John Muir Trail for a second time (the first time being in 1980). This is an arduous undertaking requiring tremendous amounts of planning, preparation and training. I had my goal: hike the entire 211-mile trail, three decades after my first epic journey on the JMT. My goal was well-defined and measurable. And I created a plan that would help me reach my goal.

My plan required coordination my schedule with work; recruiting others to join me on the epic backpacking trip; training my body and getting in shape (I lost 40 lbs. in the process); creating a day-by-day itinerary; planning the meals; getting permits; coordinating transportation, and so on. It was not easy. But it was worthwhile, because it helped me succeed at achieving this longtime goal. In August 2010, 30 years from my first JMT trek, I completed the John Muir Trail for a second time.

Whether personal, professional or business goals, the key is to define your goals, write them down, and create a plan that will help you get there.

A Challenge to You

Here’s my challenge to you. Think of three goals you would like to achieve, either personally, professionally or for your  business or organization. You might want to travel to Paris, launch a new initiative at work or go back to school. Whatever the goals, write them down, making sure they are well-defined. They should stretch you or your organization beyond what you know you can easily handle. Then sort out what it will take the achieve those goals. These steps must be something that you have control over, so if you’re counting on winning the lottery, think again. Write these steps down. This is your plan. Follow it, and you can reach your goals successfully.

What goals do you have for 2011 or beyond? Have you create a plan? I’d love to hear them.

Oh and by the way, one of my recruits for my 2010 JMT trek is now my sweetheart. Sometimes success brings unexpected rewards!

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One of the wonderful things about an iPad is that you can take your virtual library with you where ever you go. Spare moments become opportunities to catch up on reading. I’ve got three different e-readers: the Apple iBooks app, the Amazon Kindle App and the Google Books app.

iBooks is great for storing and reading PDFs, and I’ve ended up with a collection of user guides and work-related papers there. Google Books is interesting, and free, but I have yet to purchase anything or even seriously read anything with it. So far the Amazon Kindle app has been my favorite. The price of Kindle books tends to be a little cheaper than iBooks for some reason, and the reader works great.

Recent Reads

Over the holidays I managed to burn through three books (all consumed via the Kindle app):

UnMarketing: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging by Scott Stratton is a great read on how to leverage social media as a way to engage and build relationships with your customers. Instead of shouting to them from a soapbox, engage them in a conversation.

Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time is a few years old, but the stories and experiences he shares still piqued my interest. Ferrazi came from humble beginnings and went on to do quite well. He chalks it up to the power of connecting to people. Not using them, but building genuine relationships that are mutually beneficial.

The 4-Hour Body was written by Timothy Ferriss, author of the New York Times bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek. It’s designed to be read in sections, picking in choosing based on your own goals and objectives. His views are provocative — he’s a big fan of pharmaceuticals — and I’m still chewing over his ideas.

One of the observations after reading these books on my iPad is that while it’s wonderful to have  a selection of books with me at all times, the experience of working through a book is less satisfying. I mentioned this to my girlfriend (a Kindle fan) and she agreed. You don’t get the tactile satisfaction and immediate appreciation for where you are in the book. Yes, I know that there are visual cues like the little slider at the bottom of the screen, but it doesn’t replicate that feeling you get as the pages ahead become fewer and lighter.

My January Reading List

So this month, I’m going old school and reading physical books. Fortunately, Santa was good to me this Christmas, and my bookshelf is full. Here’s what’s up this month:

An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin. Published in 1994, this book looks at history from a humanistic perspective. Rather than look at history as a series of chronological events, Zeldin looks to history to discover “How some people have acquired an immunity to loneliness,” and “How respect has become more desirable that power.” Interesting premise.

Web Form Design – Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski is considered by many to be the definitive resource for usability of the all-important point of interaction between human and machine: the web form. Consider that I am using a web form to compose and submit this blog post. You may (hopefully) use the web form below to share a comment. We use web forms for email, discussion forums, chat rooms, documents, banking and shopping. They are — for now — the primary method of interaction on the web. And yet, so few websites do them well. I’m hoping to do my part to change that.

FBML Essentials by Jesse Stay is less of a read and more of a reference guide to FBML — the Facebook Markup Language. You may hear more about Facebook from me in the not-too-distant future.

Guy Kawasaki is a former Apple Fellow and noted entrepreneur and venture capitalist. His book The Art of the Start is a guide for anyone starting anything — whether that be a new product, service, company or club. Since I’m always starting up something, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to learn from a master.

What Would Google Do? is Jeff Jarvis’ treatise on how to do business in the Age of Google. The first few sentences from the book offer a telling glimpse at the premise: “It seems as if no company, executive, or institution truly understands how to survive and prosper in the internet age. Except Google. So, faced with most any challenge today, it makes sense to ask: WWGD? What would Google do?”

My book report will follow. First I have some reading to do!

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The good news is that WordPress makes the process easy with the addition of a specialized plugin service called Scribe. I’ve been using Scribe for several months now, and I’m putting together a detailed tutorial on how to use Scribe to improve a post’s search relevance. Before I jump into that, I’m going to start by covering a few basics.

First, you need a either a theme that provides support for Scribe or an plugin that adds the necessary functionality. For a great theme with built-in support, I recommend the StudioPress Genesis framework. Genesis is cleanly coded and provides built-in SEO options in the basic framework and the various child themes.

If you are using a different theme framework or have created your own, you can add the necessary functionality via a WordPress plugin. I recommend the All in One SEO Pack. There are other compatible options out there, but these are the choices I can personally recommend.

Whichever route you choose, you will see a new SEO panel in the page and post edit views, and in that panel there are three basic fields that require your attention:

1. Title – This should be a maximum of 60 characters, and a minimum of four words. This title can be different from the page or post title. Why would you do this? The title of the page or post is what WordPress displays on the page to the visitor. Sometimes you may want to use a clever headline there, but in this field, your focus should be on the primary keywords — the words or phrases that you think people would search on to find this page.For example, the title of this post is SEO Basics, but the title in my SEO panel (which is displayed in the title bar and used in search results) is the longer SEO or Search Engine Optimization Basics.  This longer version includes two variations on the keywords, so in theory someone could search for the acronym or the full words and find this page.
2. Description – This should be a maximum of 160 characters. The text is displayed by some search engines directly beneath the title in search results. Make this descriptive. Use keywords. And tell the visitor what they will see if they click through. Pretty simple.
3. Keywords – These are the words or phrases that you think people would use to search for pages like this. Each word or phrase is separated by a comma.  For example, on this post I used “seo, search engine, optimization, rank, pr, ranking, search, results, wordpress, scribe” — all keywords that someone might search on and that I would like to see this page do well with.

These fields are optional, but you should complete them on every page and post where you care about search ranking.

There’s no real magic to SEO, in spite of what some SEO specialists will tell you. Create good, valuable content. Write smart titles, descriptions and use keywords intelligently. Repeat. In time, you will see your website and pages begin to climb in the ranking.

Ready for more? I’ll be posting this tutorial in multiple parts over the next week, but if you just can’t wait for more, check out this video overview of Scribe for WordPress.

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New York Times Magazine has a great article about West’s research. West found that he can predict with 85% accuracy the average income of a city’s inhabitants or the size of their sewage system. Basically, larger cities — in spite of their unique culture — are predictably the same in almost every other measurement.

And largely, cities are more efficient and sustainable than suburban towns. The efficiencies of scale at work.

Why do people live in cities?

This excerpt from the NYT article really stuck out:

Cities are valuable because they facilitate human interactions, as people crammed into a few square miles exchange ideas and start collaborations. “If you ask people why they move to the city, they always give the same reasons,” West says. “They’ve come to get a job or follow their friends or to be at the center of a scene. That’s why we pay the high rent. Cities are all about the people, not the infrastructure.”

This reminded me very much of what I like to say about knowledge management (KM): that KM is all about connecting people, and not about the “tool” (infrastructure). This is precisely why enterprises that drive their KM actvities as an Information Technology (IT) initiative almost always fail miserably.

Sharing knowledge is an exchange between two (or more) people. Technology can either assist or get out of the way.

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What is Room Five?

Room Five is a team of talented individuals who work together to create awesome web solutions for our clients. We do not have an office. There are no set hours, and no fixed schedule. Our team members are located around the country, and come together to make magic on our projects online.

Each project is assessed and assigned based on your availability and the specific needs of the client. Some of our team members work or go to school full or part-time. For them, Room Five provides a perfect way to get involved on interesting, challenging and rewarding projects on a schedule that works for them.

Intrigued? Send an email to jeff.hester@gmail.com with a brief description of your experience and how you can contribute to the Room Five team.

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Here’s what I came up with:

Jeff Hester is passionate about communities, working with leaders, employees and developers to help them deliver business value through KM. Co-author of three books and frequent speaker, his combination of his engineering background and dot-com experience give him a unique ability to bridge the gap between practice and theory in plain English.

Whatever you think about my bio, I had a few observations about the process that anyone can benefit from.

• Telling someone who you are in 50 words or less is challenging. There’s a lot that goes unspoken in that bio.
• This bio was clearly  tailored to the audience (the knowledge management crowd). If I were speaking on WordPress or backpacking the JMT, the bio would look decidedly different. This doesn’t change who I am; it simply acknowledges that I am multi-faceted. They key point? Know your audience.
• It was fun! You may not plan to speak at a conference anytime soon, but have a clear statement about who you are and what distinguishes you from the rest of the pack is an exercise worth doing. Think of it as an elevator pitch for YOU!

Oh, and in case you counted, I came  in three words under fifty. Better to come in under budget.

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Assuming you care about the huge number of people who might want to visit your site from their mobile device, there are two important issues that warrant some thought.

Keep it Light

Back in the early days of the Internet, most people used dial-up access. The rule of thumb for websites was to keep the total size of  your page to less than 100 KB so that it could load reasonably quickly for dial-up users. Today, most computers connect via some form of broadband, and–according to Google–the average page size has ballooned to over 300 KB or more. While this works great for most fast broadband connections, mobile users may have data access speeds that are much slower. On top of that, many times they are paying by the drink. Some mobile providers charge based on how much data usage you slurp, so the greater your usage, the bigger bite they take out of your wallet. And don’t forget about data roaming!

Make it Useful

The mobile version of your website should not be a replica of the desktop experience. Just because your site can be displayed on an iPhone, doesn’t mean it’s mobile-ready. A mobile user has very different needs.

Domino’s Pizza provides a great illustration of this.  Visit the main Domino’s website on your computer and you can find a wealth of information. There are menus, online ordering, location information, nutritional info and even information about the corporation. Almost anything you want to know about Domino’s can be found on the site.

What are the primary objectives for the mobile visitor? How do they differ from the person sitting at a computer? For Domino’s, they want to make it easy for someone on a mobile device to place an order and find a store. You don’t get all the bells and whistles of the full website, just the key activities that Domino’s has found most mobile users want.

Taking Your WordPress-powered Site Mobile

It is said there are a thousand ways to skin a cat. There are probably even more ways to provide mobile support for your WordPress-powered website. I’m not even going to attempt to cover them all, but I will point out a few quick and relatively easy solutions. Essentially the options fall into one of three categories:

1. Roll your own. You can create a mobile CSS file that scales down the design and content for mobile users. This really isn’t too hard, but it does require some technical knowledge of CSS. I won’t be covering this– instead I’m going to focus on the easier solutions.
2. Mobile Plugins/Themes. There are WordPress themes or plugins designed specifically to provide mobile support.

Mobile-izing WordPress

One of the easiest ways to add a mobile version of your self-hosted WordPress site is with the WPtouch plugin. WPtouch is available in both free and commercial versions. It provides a much-improved mobile interface on iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre, Samsung touch and BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile devices.

I use WPtouch on several of my sites, including socalhiker.net and here at jeffhester.net.

The easiest way to try the free version is simply to add a new plugin via the WordPress admin console or download from here in  the WordPress.org plugin directory.

As you see in the screenshots above, the mobile version generated with WPtouch looks considerably different from the full site. The benefit to the mobile user is that it loads quickly, gives them something with an interface optimized for their device, and still gives them access to the content.

Of course, you can customize it further with your branding and colors. As time permits, I’ll do that as well. But without a lot of fuss or effort, you get something very usable on a mobile device.

There are many other good options including Mobify. VisionWidget has a more comprehensive overview if you’d like to see some alternatives.

Testing Mobile Support

Chances are, you already have a mobile phone or device to test on, but how do you test your mobile site on a variety of devices without buying them all? There isn’t a single option that works well for this, but CrossBrowserTesting will let you see what your site looks like on Android, iPhone and iPad devices. It’s a commercial service with a free trial.

For even more mobile options, check out PerfectoMobile. They focus exclusively on mobile devices, but include a much larger range.

Potential Problems

One obvious design difference between a typical site and a mobile version is that it won’t typically have a sidebar. If you rely on the sidebar for navigation or other functionality, you’ll need to provide another solution with your mobile version.

Another common issue will is Flash. Apple devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad don’t support Flash, and many video sites use Flash players. The mobile Safari browser on Apple devices will support HTML5 video, but you may need to tweak your embed technique to specify this.

Some of the mobile systems like WPtouch have issues with third-party comment systems like Disqus, Intense Debate or Echo. Usually this is not a showstopper, but if you use one of these systems, plan on doing some additional testing.

Summing it All Up

This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list of options, but my own preference. Hopefully this whets your appetite for providing mobile support on your websites.

Got a better solution? Share your knowledge! Leave a comment  below.

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