Hey, website developers! Give me a standard mobile URL please!

*sigh* Why can’t web developers agree on a standard naming convention for accessing mobile-device friendly pages?!?!

Tonight I was trying to search on Amazon for a book from my iPAQ h6315. The full interface was frustrating and slow, so I wanted to find one friendlier to mobile devices. I tried mobile.amazon.com, wap.amazon.com, www.amazon.com/mobile, etc. No dice.

Finally, I searched their help and there, in an obscure FAQ entry, I located my goal: www.amazon.com/pocketpc ! Like that was intuitive…

To Amazon’s credit, they do have a nice looking mobile interface. In fact, the shopping cart is shared with the desktop version of the site.

Here are what sites need to do to be friendlier to devices (in decreasing order of preference):

1. Detect my browser type and redirect me to whatever your mobile device friendly home page is.

2. Provide a standard URL for mobile device users so we all know what to ask for. I suggest mobile.yoursite.com

3. Provide SOME kind of link on your home page - as in “mobile users click here”

What do you think?