By Stephen Pierzchala

Across industries, the potential of the mobile Web as a channel for strengthening customer relationships, extending brand loyalty and generating revenues has been widely recognized. 

Consider that sales of popular smartphones such as the iPhone are expected to double from 2010 to 2012. Nielsen data shows that mobile Web sites deliver an average 13 percent increase in audience reach over purely PC-based traffic.

Despite this potential, a key fact remains: overall, Web performance on a mobile device remains no match for PC-based Web performance.

Today, mobile Web visitors are bringing performance expectations created by the wired Web to the mobile Web ? and are being disappointed in large numbers.

Expectation and experience
Earlier this year, Gomez found mobile Web sites to be an average of 30 percent slower than their wired Web counterparts.

And yet, a subsequent Gomez study found that a majority of mobile Web users expect Web sites to load as quickly, almost as quickly or faster on their mobile devices as the traditional versions of these sites do on their home or work computers. 

Clearly when it comes to performance, customers do not distinguish between the mobile Web and the wired Web.

To customers, there is only one Web and while they may be willing to sacrifice some functionality for the sake of anytime-anywhere Web access, they make no special allowances for poor mobile Web performance, particularly slow load times.

Within this context, it is not surprising that the number of mobile Web users who actually make purchases online remains relatively low in comparison to the overall number of people accessing the mobile Web. 

A recent Forrester Research survey found that only 14 percent of U.S. Web buyers who own an Internet-enabled mobile device have used it to make purchases. 

Almost half of the survey respondents who had not yet used the mobile Web to make purchases said they would do so if the mobile Web experience were faster than it is now.

What this boils down to is that businesses looking to unlock the full potential of the mobile Web simply must ensure that customers experience performance similar to a desktop PC.

PC talk for mobile Web
The key to ensuring superior mobile Web experiences lies in leveraging proven Web performance management tools and techniques from the PC Web world.

These tools and techniques allow businesses to:

? Quickly gain and leverage a true view of performance as experienced by all critical mobile user segments throughout the world in order to preemptively identify and resolve problems, ideally before customers are even aware a problem exists
 
? Proactively test and measure performance across the full mobile Web application delivery chain ? helping to optimize a wide range of performance-impacting variables ? for example, third-party services, Internet service providers, carriers content delivery networks, browsers and devices ? that stand between the datacenter and customers, and that ultimately shape customer experiences

? Gain a unified view of overall Web performance ? both mobile and PC-based. By monitoring and managing performance in a side-by-side fashion, businesses can achieve a one-Web approach that guarantees Web performance, regardless of customers? mode of access

It is critical to the success of any mobile Web site or application that performance tests and measurements be conducted both before and after deployment. 

Indeed, it is a huge strategic ? and possibly expensive mistake ? to wait until after a major mobile marketing push to learn that a mobile Web site displayed shoddy performance for one or two high-priority mobile customer segments. 

Ongoing performance monitoring provides opportunities to continually optimize all the critical touch-points in the mobile Web application delivery chain, which helps ensure superior overall performance for mobile Web sites and applications.

Web of damage
Businesses that make heavy investments in mobile Web initiatives without focusing adequately on performance management do so at considerable risk. 

Web users, including mobile Web users, are growing increasingly intolerant of poor performance, the negative effect of which can include not just lost revenue opportunities, but also increased costs.

Consider disgruntled customers dialing your call center, as well as the additional development costs of reworking poorly performing mobile Web sites and applications after deployment.

Add to that brand damage and a severe customer backlash that tends to play out in social media channels. 

Fortunately, today?s Web performance management tools can be applied to the mobile Web, and are easier and faster to use, as well as more cost-effective and accessible than ever before. 

Businesses that use these solutions to support a proactive approach to mobile Web performance management will be in a stronger position to maximize investments in mobile Web initiatives and reap the full benefits of this growing channel.

Stephen Pierzchala is senior consultant at Gomez Inc., Lexington, MA. Reach him at .