Whether you’re hip to Twitter or not, the recent change to the company’s homepage provides an important lesson for marketers.

The Case:

Many users of Twitter failed to understand how to use the microblogging service, and thus abandoned it soon after creating an account.

Solution:

The homepage was updated to include example feeds and current trending topics so visitors could see examples of information that could be found on the service.

Issue:

To the social media novice, this update attempts to illustrate how the service is relevant or useful to the non-tech geek or celebrity fan. The site goes further to explain how to build a network of followers, what type of content a user should post, and possible business applications for the site through links on the homepage.

Lesson:

If your website isn’t addressing the concerns of visitors, it may do more to confuse them then educate them about your business. When website visitors don’t understand why they should care about a particular site, they are quick to abandon it and find one that does address their questions and needs.

You can please some of the people some of the time, but when it comes to frustrating mobile web browsers you’re probably already doing that in spades.

The image below is how much real estate the average Internet enabled phone has to view your webpage:

That’s not even large enough to view this entire blog post, let alone the graphics on the page.

Does your website have a Flash intro, or does it rely heavily on Flash elements?  If you said yes, guess what, no one with a mobile phone can view your page.  iPhones are unable to display Flash, and mobile Flash (for Andriod phones) won’t display certain elements and animations.  Plus, the large files associated with Flash will cripple most mobile phones trying to access them over their carrier network.

Thanks to server side technology, most IT departments can code a specialized site for mobile browsers that will display properly, and will be redirected to by your homepage when people link from Google or other search engines.

But the key question becomes: what is it that you want your mobile friendly website to accomplish?  Is it to educate, build awareness, or drive actions?