Your website sucks.
Don’t get me wrong: It may be a marvel of beauty and interactivity when viewed on a 20-inch monitor, or even a notebook computer’s puny 13-incher, but on a phone? That’s where it looks, well, let’s just use euphemisms, like “hideous” and “revolting.” It’s not because it’s not well-designed. It’s because it’s not designed for viewing on the phone, where the text of the typical website is illegible and the viewing experience a frustrating one.
But that’s not always the case. Sometimes, you may stumble on a website that’s a joy to view on your phone, with readable text, easy-to-navigate icons, and no need to attempt to scroll around the page with frantic movements of your thumb or forefinger. The website seems like it was made for the phone, and for a simple reason: It was. Plenty of companies are creating alternate websites specially designed for phones. Just check out those little “m” sites popping up, like m.engadget.com and m.facebook.com.
All of this complicates things for web designers and developers, but there’s no avoiding it. Anyone with material that’s on the web, in fact, should be thinking about what sort of impression they’re creating when someone views a web page from a phone. Can they read it? Or do they just leave in frustration? As it turns out, you don’t have to invest a fortune to do build a mobile website.
Here are four spots to help you build mini-websites for mobile phones.
- Wirenode
Wirenode (“the mobile website creator”) sells itself with a catchy phrase: “Build your own mobile web in five minutes.” Five minutes? Who doesn’t have five minutes to spare? So I tried it, and you know what? Five minutes got me a bare-bones page without much content. But a couple of hours or more with Wirenode, and I’m sure I’d have something worthy of sharing. Wirenode’s technology will detect what sort of phone is being used to access the your site, adjusting the display to the phone’s display. If you have an RSS feed at your site, Wirenode can automatically generate a site based on the feed. Very, very cool.
- Jag.ag
You want to try to build a mobile site? Jag.ag makes that easy, as the site doesn’t even require you to sign up for an account in order to try its mobile website creator. You just click the start button and start experimenting—an easy way to see the possibilities and limitations of free mobile site tools. (If you want to publish the site, you will need to create an account.) Jag.ag is clearly targeting non-techie consumers, as its homepage shows sample pages for colorful greetings and invitations.
- MoFuse
Got a blog? Then MoFuse would like to help you turn it into a mobile website. And that’s not all. Aside from making happy campers out of your mobile readers by giving them something intelligible to digest, MoFuse will help you earn money from mobile ads and provide analytics on mobile visitors.
- Zinadoo
Maybe you don’t even want a website that’s not for your phone. Maybe you don’t even own a computer, and you don’t really care how your website looks on one. With Zinadoo, you can even create a website straight from your mobile phone. Sure, you can create it from a computer, too, but with phones increasingly becoming everyone’s favorite computing device, you may see some people opting for a phone-only solution.
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