By Marci Troutman and Steve Timpson

What a world we live in. The poet and philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Somehow that seems fitting when we look at the large amount of commerce and information that is passed through this invisible world we call the Internet and reflect on how Luddite-acting many large Fortune 500 companies appear in terms of their Internet strategy and the mobile universe.

The signs all point to the oncoming convergence of the mobile appliance as a communication device, personal secretary, social director, storefront, and the list goes on.

Yes, there are issues with format. Yes, there are issues with carriers and their stranglehold on the operating systems. Yes, there are issues with how many people have smartphones versus dumb phones, but that shouldn't stop a company from acting now to be a first mover in this mobile megatrend.

Now that our rant is done, what are we really talking about?

We understand that there are a variety of approaches to optimize the Web for mobile usage -- the WAP, .mobi and more. What we continue to find difficult to understand is why Web site owners don't grasp the need for two sites: one that works in the PC/Mac world of largeness and one that works in the mobile world of smallness.

The point is we are now spending a lot more time educating companies and people -- who we consider pretty market-savvy -- about the value of the small content screen in view of the largeness of the opportunity.

Our marketing strategy has had a course correction over the last 18 months away from the technical issues and directly to the people responsible for the marketing and sales. Unfortunately, most companies do not do well in marrying up the IT Internet folks with the hard-line sales and marketing folks.

Tailor for format
Retailers and other Web site owners will always have the need for two sites, a PC/Mac version and a mobile version.

If a marketing company designs a billboard, and then must create a postcard for a direct mail piece with the same content, it will have to pare down the content from the larger ad to allow consumers to read the smaller ad.

The same concept applies in the translation of the PC/Mac to the mobile: the same content on a bigger screen cannot be user- friendly on a mobile screen.

Even if users are willing to turn their mobile devices sideways, retailers need to provide a separate site that pares down the content to a reasonable size so that the consumer can understand the key message.

The size of the mobile marketplace and its continuing explosive growth makes it critical for businesses to realize the unique characteristics of mobile users and their appliances if they want to gain greater market penetration and create new, broader market opportunities.

It will be an uphill battle to get this concept fully ingrained in the DNA of companies that do a lot of transactions over the Internet.

Once marketers reach that point of understanding, changes will happen fast, as fast as when companies finally get it with the PC/Mac large-screen Internet format.

Marci Troutman is founder and Steve Timpson is chief operating officer of mobile site developer Siteminis Inc., Atlanta. Reach them at and