By Ray Anderson

Many great things come in two parts -- the megapixel sensor and digital photography, the carbon fiber filament and the light bulb, baseball and Babe Ruth. The history of the Internet is no exception.

As with other inventions, the Internet's evolution involved a technology introduction (part one) and then general mass-market adoption (part two). This two-part approach again is playing out in the latest phase of the Internet -- the mobile Web.

The first part in the development of the mobile Web started in 1998 when the WAP Forum introduced WML 1.1, effectively creating a new separate Web for mobile devices. This saw limited success outside the mobile decks, created by the world's various mobile network operators.

Part two -- the mobile mass market -- remains elusive.

Today, the browser likely is the key to moving part two of mobile Web evolution forward.

The Apple iPhone has raised public awareness for browsing the Web on mobile phones -- a trend that all the other handset providers have been quick to follow.

Whether it is the new mobile players such as Apple and Microsoft (with Windows Mobile) or the established mobile leaders including Nokia with its N Series, the one consistent element is a full Internet browser.

Mobile operators such as Sprint are helping accelerate this by providing transcoding capabilities to ensure all phones can see the traditional Web sites without the need for special mobile sites to be built.

With this seed now sown, it's clear that a unified Web is upon us, blurring the lines between desktop Web sites and those built for mobile.

As part two of the mobile Web plays out, it's time for anyone with a Web site to get up-to-speed with mobile visitors. There are two things to think about.

First, now is the time for business -- especially larger brands -- to understand how much of the overall traffic to their PC Web sites comes from mobile devices.

Brands need to be prepared to modify their Web sites so that they can track this audience and appeal directly to them using the appropriate marketing tools.

Next, it's also critical to ensure PC site looks good on a range of new and old mobile handsets.

You may find, for example, that operator transcoding is breaking your site or making it look unattractive. You can use DeviceAnywhere from Mobile Complete to test different handsets from different countries.

Brands that move in this direction now will be better prepared for what's shaping up to be a familiar scenario.

After all, part two of the PC Internet did not really take off until the arrival of the first truly consumer-friendly Web browser with the launch of NCSA Mosaic in 1993. This made it easy for anyone with a PC to reach Web sites by typing the now familiar URL that had started to appear on every TV show and in every magazine.

We all know the rest of the story with the famous Web gold rush in the late '90s. It was a great time, especially if you saw it coming. For those that missed out the first time around, now's the time to make sure you are prepared to capitalize on the second Web gold rush -- on mobile.

Ray Anderson is Cambridge, England-based CEO of Bango, a mobile Internet services provider. Reach him at