How do you make your businesses website ready for mobile users?
More and more people are starting to access the internet from their
mobile phone, and analyst Morgan Stanley estimates that if smartphone
sales continue at their current pace, then the number of users accessing
the internet on a phone will exceed desktop internet users by 2015.
While
most smartphones can access the internet the experience they get is
less than perfect, as most websites just aren't designed for mobile
phones. By creating a mobile-friendly site, you won't just get access to
more users: you'll also have a huge leap on your competitors.
Before
you create a mobile website it's worth looking at why most websites are
hard to access and use on a mobile. Sites designed for desktop users
are huge.
Website size matters
Take the TechRadar site as
an example, our front page has lots and lots of columns of information,
which can be difficult to see and navigate, even on the best iPhone
Apple can make. It's also 2.96Mb in size, which, on a fast 20Mbps
broadband connection takes less than a second, but on a mobile, in an
area with a poor connection it can take minutes to download.
Ideally,
you'll want your mobile website to be quick to access, be simple to
navigate and be organised in more mobile-friendly chunks.
Mobile site build strategies
There
are several different strategies you can adopt for building a mobile
website; start afresh and build a completely new website, or adapt your
current site. For most businesses the latter option is best, it allows
you to dip your toe in the water, and if it works then you can then move
to a site that has a mobile strategy at its core.
The quickest
way to construct a mobile site is to look at one of the many online
mobile portal tools. These services allow you to create mobile sites in
just a few minutes or a few hours or little cost.
The sites you
build are either created from a selection of pre-defined mobile
templates, or they allow you to create new mobile templates using drag
and drop features.
With most of the mobile portal building sites,
you create a basic mobile site either by specifying the functions you
want or, in some cases, you drag and drop the features you want on to a
dummy mobile screen.
The range of functions available can be
limited - although most portal builders are adding new functions all the
time, - but most allow you to create multiple pages and sections, add
feedback forms, create links to social networks like Twitter and
Facebook, and have some sort of analytics to tell you where your
customers came from.
Here's just a small selection of the current tools for creating a mobile website.
Wapple http://www.wapple.net
Wappledescribes
itself as "the most advanced mobile web build, development and
publishing technology" and it's not an idle boast. With Wapple you can
create very sophisticated mobile websites and have them up and running
very quickly.
There are two ways to develop with Wapple, you can
either use the simple drag-and-drop controls which will get you a
workable and well-designed site in less than 30 minutes. Or you can
drill-down and tweak every element of a page and produce something very
sophisticated.
Features include click-to-call, SEO functions,
polls, questionnaires, a mobile shop, built-in forms, analytics, social
media, video and Google maps integration.
mobiSiteGalore http://www.mobisitegalore.com
mobiSiteGalore
has a huge selection of available features that you can draw on to
create some very sophisticated mobile websites.
Features include
widgets to do site search, add Google News and Sitemap, as well as
creating click-to-call features, ecommerce features include the ability
to accept Google checkout, PayPal or Bango payments, and design features
include photo galleries through to adding audio and video clips.
mobiSiteGalore
has a free limited trial service that allows you to setup a website
with three pages and limited features and hosting, through to a
professional pack with unlimited pages and features for just $225 a
year.
MobilePress http://mobilepress.co.za
If your website
is built using the WordPress content management service (CMS) then
MobilePresswill get your business up and running very quickly.
MobilePress
is a free WordPress plugin that will enable you to browse your
WordPresswebsite on mobile handsets, with the ability to use customised
themes.
Built into MobilePress is the ability to track your
mobile sites analytics and serve ads from some of the biggest mobile ad
networks such as Admob, Quattro Wireless, Buzzcity and InMobi. You can
also serve you own managed ads.
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