It's bad business to build a site these days that is not optimized for the mobile browsers used by an increasing share of the market. And soon, it will also be necessary to facilitate mobile ecommerce in order to make sales and stay competitive. People are using their iPhones, Blackberries and other handhelds for pretty much everything, from scheduling to videography, and shopping is the next big thing.

Luckily for all us open source loyalists, we too will be able to ride this wave into the future of e-business. Varien has annouced the pre-release of Magento Mobile, a robust and fully functional mobile app for the powerful Magento ecommerce platform. Soon your visitors will be able to purchase your products wherever they are - upping your sales, your visibility, and your tech cred.

Integration into your existing online storefront means you only need to work from one catalogue, with one set of configurations and customizations. You won't need to spend money designing separate, unique mobile apps - Magento lets you pick and choose the features you want, and you pay accordingly. Even better, for a low monthly fee Magento will manage the maintenance and lifecycles of the app, staying on top of versioning, iTunes updates, and bugfixing so you don't have to. They're even working on iPad and Android platforms, assuring you stay a step ahead of the marketplace.

Magento Mobile is currently in a limited release - Make Good Media plans to be one of the first to use and implement this technology for our clients. We'll keep you posted on this exciting development as it happens.