Tools to Make Your Web Site Mobile
Back when the Internet first became popular and easily accessible, the number-one business rule was to have a Web site. Now that mobile Internet usage is continuing to rise, many businesses are realizing that having a mobile Web site is just as important. Whether you need to build a mobile site from the ground up or simply convert your traditional Web site into a mobile-friendly version, these easy (and mostly free) tools can help you get the job done.
Google’s Conversion Tool
It doesn’t get any easier than this. Simply enter your Web site’s URL, click the “Go” button, and Google will convert your Web site into a mobile-friendly version by removing the site header and ads and either resizing or removing images. With Google’s conversion tool you sacrifice the ability to customize the domain and look of your site, but it’s easy, it’s free, and it requires no signup. You can even earn a little extra cash by inserting Google mobile ads.
Jag.ag
If you want to build a mobile site from scratch but know nothing about programming, try Jag.ag. This user-friendly tool lets you experiment with different page designs, images, and colors to see what works and what doesn’t work before you open an account. Perhaps the coolest part is that it allows you to capture any part of the Web and drag and drop the image into your mobile site. To publish your site, simply sign up for a free account.
If you want a Web site converter that’s just as easy to use as Google’s but would like to retain control over the design and domain, try MobiSiteGalore. This free tool provides customizable design templates so you can choose the color, font, and layout of your page, and it has a WYSIWYG page editor so you can create rich XHTML content without any programming knowledge. Best of all, MobiSiteGalore guarantees that your site will work on any mobile phone since it’s 100 percent compliant with the World Wide Web Consortium’s mobile web standards.
MoFuse
Bloggers will love this one. Simply enter your RSS feed, choose a subdomain, and you have a mobile blog that works on every cell phone, including iPhone, Android, and other portable devices such as Kindle and Sony PlayStation. MoFuse gives you a highly customizable mobile site by allowing you to use your own logo, colors, and domain. It even offers an analytics tool to help you track your mobile visitors. MoFuse for Blogs is free, but you’ll have to upgrade to plans starting at $7.95 a month if you want your site advertisement-free.
Another tool that helps you build a custom mobile Web site is Zinadoo. In addition to providing an idiot-proof WYSIWYG editor to design your site, Zinadoo allows you to upload videos and boost your mobile Web site traffic with keywords and tags that are searchable by most mobile search engines. Zinadoo provides free hosting, a free site-creation tool, and a free Zinadoo .mobi domain, but it charges $22 if you want to drop “.zinadoo” from the URL. The other catch is that Zinadoo will display its own ads on your site in order to fund its “free” service. The cost of disabling these ads for six months is nearly $40.
