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The odds are pretty good that if you have been surfing the Web for at least a year you have seen a micropage and not recognized it for what it is..

There is actually a site called micropage.org that purportedly links to example micropage sites. In fact, they don’t apear to be micropage sites to me at all, but micropage.org is a micropage site.

You’ll see micropages in rare places because Web designers tend to spoil the concept. A micropage format may be suitable for a phone number search result, a social media site profile, or a data entry form like a login screen. The micropage can be sparsely populated or intensively populated.

Micropages should start to sound familiar to those of you who have been surfing the mobile Web but in fact they’ve been around for years and you can occasionally main traditional Web sites that employ them for a variety of reasons.

Micropage content can be integrated with your traditional Web content through a simple text link embedded in the upper left-hand corner of your pages (independently of your traditional Web navigation or as part of your traditional Web navigation).

Micropages obviously don’t conform to Web 2.0 expectations and standards. You can certainly dress up a micropage with some style sheets to make it look more robust to someone who isn’t surfing on a mobile phone but you can use micropages to improve accessibility, define concepts, and structure a robust on-site help system that isn’t cluttered with bandwidth-hogging mastheads, advertisements, etc.

Micropages can be used to provide quick, lean information.

Micropages should be used to offer a small selection of choices.

You need to justify the cost of using your resources for the mobile user. Read more about ringtones and new innovations like the IPhone here.

But if you’re integrating micropages into your regular Web content you need to ensure that you offer your visitors a clear direction back to the typical content they reach out from. That is, you may be able to leverage micropages to serve the needs of multiple users.

Micropages are quick and easy to build, so be careful you don’t bloat your site with too many micropages. We have not yet had a real chance to evaluate the impact that micropages will have on the World Wide Web. They have, until now, been relatively scarce. I think that in a relatvely short amount of time there will be a growing abundance of micropage content that we’ll have to integrate into the regular Web.