Given today is the release of the new iPad (iPad 3) from Apple, I thought I’d take a few moments and talk about how you need to take advantage of people using iPad’s, and how to make sure their leisure viewing leads to finding your company.

With the ease of access the iPad offers to people, companies are seeing an increased number of visits to their company websites, simply because people love surfing the web on the iPad. People don’t look in the yellow pages for businesses anymore – they sit on the couch and pick up their iPad.

To those of us who use terms like mobile website and app on a daily basis, the difference is clear, but to many it’s not. Knowing the difference and determining what is better for you, can save you thousands of dollars.

One of the main and most noticeable differences is that an App requires being in an app store, making it only available after purchasing and downloading it. This means that in order to get or find this app, you must go to the App Store and search for it. For many, this is not going to be suitable for their customers.

As many already know, people aren’t going to the yellow pages anymore to find service providers, restaurants, gyms, and other local places of business. Searches in Google, Yahoo, and Bing for local service providers have skyrocketed over the last few years.

Many companies are familiar with the ideology that you need to be in the search engines, in order to reach your customers by whatever means they want to use to find you. A big part of this in the upcoming year is going to be via mobile devices.

A mobile website is a website that is built specifically to function and display on mobile devices. While some websites will load fine on newer smartphones like the iPhone, the website still might not be a mobile website.

Websites designed and developed specifically for mobile devices are generally very basic and to the point. They also feature technologies that are compatible with mobile devices, and leave out technologies that aren’t, such as Flash.

If you just learned the value of having a website, you’re in for another treat – mobile websites. While some people believe a mobile website is pulling up your regular website on a mobile device, they are sadly mistaken. A mobile website is a website that is designed and developed to display and function on iPhone/Droid/Blackberry internet browsers.

Why is it so important to have one? Let’s look into it.

Flash: As if flash wasn’t already bad due to the lack of search engine optimization allowed, it gets worse. Mobile devices, such as the iPhone, do not play flash. If your beautiful restaurant website, in flash, has a stunning, page-flipping menu, you’re screwed!