As smartphones swiftly take over the world, we’ve all come to expect constant information access at our fingertips. Lead Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker famously predicted last year that mobile internet access in the U.S. will exceed fixed internet access sometime in the next couple of years. This change has shifted mobile websites from a nice luxury that a business can offer to a necessity.

What impact does this have on website design? Well, it takes us back a few steps down the evolutionary ladder to working within a much smaller window. In recent years, computer screens have grown, giving designers a lot of real estate to work with. Mobile development reverses that trend, meaning that intelligent choices have to be made regarding formatting and content to maximize benefit to the end consumer while maintaining good design.

Fortunately, mobile access can be detected and users can be redirected from your company’s primary site to a mobile-specific site, so all sites aren’t limited to the lowest common denominator of mobile design. The most effective mobile sites only contain about 25% of the content of a company’s primary website because visitors are usually looking for quick and easy for information. Think phone numbers and not in-depth company histories, prices and not lengthy product descriptions. When developing your mobile website, ask yourself the following interrelated questions:

• What is the purpose of the mobile website? Honing the central purpose you’re seeking to accomplish is even more important with mobile sites than primary sites. Do you want the site to simply serve as a basic signpost letting consumers know where your store is and how they can visit? Do you want to sell products directly through the site? Do you want to provide access to information and commentary that users might find useful? Do you want to allow consumers to interact with each other and with the company? Decide what you want to accomplish and build the site around that central purpose, trimming details that don’t contribute.
• Why would users come to your mobile website? What you want to accomplish with a site is all well and good but if it doesn’t match potential consumer need it won’t be effective. Answering this question can be very complicated or very simple – think about how you access mobile websites. Put yourself in the potential user’s shoes and think about what they want from your site. If you’re a product manufacturer, your primary purpose in a mobile site is undoubtedly to encourage sales of your products. But how best to do that? You could offer long, in-depth details about your products and the manufacturing process. But mobile users are much more likely to prefer access to very basic product details, contact info if they have questions and a dealer locator.

These are just two key questions that need to be asked in the mobile development process. Because you never want to duplicate your primary site on your mobile site, questions like these help you to start thinking about how to pare down your assets to a more streamlined and effective site.