You always surf the Internet using your desktop computer monitor and after you are prompted to visit a mobile version of the website you expect to find something pretty much the same. I have to disappoint you. And here are 3 main reasons:

Myth 1/3. Mobile version is just a small website.

Imagine someone walking down the street and looking the mobile version of your website. I’m sure you are not going to kill your users, so they have to finish looking the website before steps out into traffic. That is why mobile version of the website need to be more informative, remove all unnecessary graphics and descriptions. The mobile website has to differ, and even may have complimentary role to the website.

Myth 2/3. Mobile design needs to fit all.

Nowadays web designers have to optimize websites to look correctly in dozens of combination of browsers and operations systems. But it is possible and the entire audience is almost covered.

The situation is different with mobile phones. There is no any standard and mobile phones are becoming more differentiated. Website that looks correctly in Nokia N97, looks different in iPhone and looks more different in Blackberry. The variety of mobile devices is so great, that it is impossible to optimize website to identically in all of them.

Myth 3/3. People will not register.

Registration is usually boring procedure and nobody likes it. The situation is more critical with mobile phones. They feel more like a wallet not a computer, it is harder to type characters. That is why registration must be as simple as possible. The acceptable way could be to give membership directly after providing username and password.

As a conclusion I give you a known wisdom: investigate needs of your customers, their behaviour and create solutions that fit these precisely. Mobile web design is not an exception.