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So we're coming towards the end of another interesting week and I for one am definitely glad that the weekend isn't too far away. While there's some rain forecast for the weekend for where I live that's not a problem ... I'll just be glad to be able to spend some time catching up on all the things that have been building up this week.

That doesn't mean that I've spent every second of this week working ... I have grabbed a few minutes here and there to do a little reading. Of course all the reading that I've been doing has been work related ... but at least it was a book that I was reading.

Actually the book was one of the latest to look at web design for mobile devices and that's something that is really interesting me right now. We're seeing a slowly growing demand from clients for sites that can be viewed on cell phones and to do that well means taking an almost totally different approach than you would if you were designing a site to be viewed on a personal computer or a laptop.

Since we've been involved in mobile website design our focus has often been on the device that people will use to view the website. We've been stressing over screen sizes rather than thinking about the people who will be using those mobile devices.

We haven't entirely ignored the people who will be using those devices and I've even written about the need to take those people into account but they haven't really been our focus. However something I read in the book has made me think again about where our focus should really be.

The authors of Build Mobile included a quote from another mobile designer and author who said:

"Fundamentally, "mobile" refers to the user, and not the device or the application."

And they build on that to reinforce the idea that when we design for mobile devices we should be designing for the mobile user. We should be thinking about where they are ... what they're doing ... what they need ... and how quickly they need it.

When you think about it for a moment or two it's not hard to see why someone who is using a mobile device to surf the web has different needs to someone who is surfing the web from their home computer or their laptop.

And that's all very well but what has that got to do with what we adult webmasters are doing with our marketing sites?

Well hopefully it already has you thinking about the sites that you're currently designing ... and not just those sites that you're building for mobile devices.

Who are you building those sites for? Are you building them for yourself ... for what is important for you? Or are you building them for the people that you want to sell your products too?

Obviously the people what hit our sites are looking for a lot more than what we should even think of giving them. We're really not in the business of providing free porn regardless of what our surfers may think but are the sites we build focused on our 'client' and their needs and wants or are they focused on the products we are selling?

Good marketing copy always puts the focus on the benefits of buying whatever the copy is selling rather than the features of the product it's selling. It always talks about what that product can do to improve a person's life rather than talking about all the bells and whistles that a product has.

Sometimes that copy will be quite blunt in the way it addresses the benefits and at other times it will be a little more subtle but the focus never changes ... it's always about the benefits rather than the features because that's what sells a product.

So what are you trying to sell on your website and how are you going about getting people to buy your product. Are you always talking about all the hardcore action and the bonuses someone gets if they sign up? Or are you talking about how a person will feel and the pleasure they will get if they buy your product?

Are you building your sites for yourself and your sponsors or are you building them with the focus squarely on the needs and aspirations of the people who are surfing your sites?

It's definitely worth thinking about and you may just see some value in changing the focus of your site from how good your product is to how much pleasure someone can get when they buy whatever it is that you're selling.