One of the biggest challenges today and at the same time one of the biggest opportunities when it comes to developing a website is how to reach out effectively on all the different platforms that are available.

A couple of years ago the biggest issue was creating websites that looked the same on different browsers. Internet Explorer, Firefox etc rendered many sites in totally different ways. Though this problem still exists it has become much easier in many ways due to newer version releases of the popular browsers.

Today the greatest challenge is how you can communicate on the web in an effective way both with people who visit you using a regular computer, an Iphone, an Android phone, a Symbian phone, an Ipad etc.

Different smartphones use different operating systems and different kinds of browsers and they have very different screen resolutions.

Loic Le Meur (founder of the LeWeb conference) writes in a recent blog post titled; The nightmare of developers and brands:

"It used to be simple. You just needed a website. Whatever you do on the web today, it's now a nightmare if you want to optimize your presence.

Platforms

You need to be on all popular platforms. iPhone of course, Android because it's getting huge, WIndows Phone 7 because it's now Nokia's OS, Mac, PC, Chrome OS... unsure about others frankly. Try already to be great at those six, not that easy.

App Stores

You need to be on all the above platforms stores, of course. But wait, there is more. You need to submit and manage your app to the mobile carrier app stores, they all have one. That's only a start, wait until the manufacturers themselves, the Samsung, Dell, HP and Sony have theirs, HP has one with the Palm acquisition... Even Amazon has an store for applications. Bonus startup idea of the day: create a service to help register and manage my app in all those stores in all languages, I can be your first customer."

 My thought is this. Instead of looking at challenges, let's look at opportunities.

• Never before have so many people been connected to the internet, which gives us an increased possible audience.
• The internet connected smartphones give us the opportunity to reach people when they are on the road. Lots of people use their smartphones very intensively when standing in the waiting line etc and we can be right there with them! Case in point - Lifechurch's incredibly popular Youversion Bible app for Iphones.
• In many parts of the world an internet connected smartphone might actually be the cheapest and simplest way for people to come online.
• Compared to TV and so on, reaching out effectively on the web is a really good bargain!

There are many more of course.

So, in the close future we will be looking at different tools you can use to create a good presence on as many platforms as possible.
We would love to get your thoughts and ideas on this. Please comment with a link to interesting articles or tools that you know of so that we can spread them.

Thanks!
Tobias sturesson