Preparing your website for mobile devices

Nowadays more and more people are using smart phones to access the internet. The rise of the mobile is undeniable and perhaps the future of the web lies on mobile devices. It seems that almost everybody has a cell phone these days, and with the growing adoption of smart phones, more and more people are browsing internet pages on their mobile device. Some phones, for example iPhone, have browsers that make viewing regular webpages suitable. However a mobile version of your website can give you several benefits, such as faster load times, and wide coverage of devices, i.e your website can be viewed on a wider range of phones.
There were conducted several researches that studied mobile solutions for optimizing websites for mobile devicese. As the result a number of solutions was suggested that make easy to go mobile with your website and I`d like to present you the best ways “to go mobile”:

1) WPtouch is a mobile theme for a WordPress website. Modeled after Apple’s app store design specs, it loads lightning fast and shows your content in a beautiful way, without interfering with your regular site theme. WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into a web-application experience when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android, or BlackBerry Storm touch mobile device.

2) MoFuse is currently being used by over 23,000 blogs for their mobile versions. Some notable “big-name” sites are Mashable and Read Write Web. MoFuse gives you tools to promote your content, build and measure your audience, and even make money.

3) Mobify is probably the best service out there for you if you are engaged in e-commerce. Mobify offers HTML5 features for its clients and gives you full control over the layout of your mobile site with CSS, and supports over 5000 mobile devices.

4) Wirenode currently hosts nearly 40,000 mobile webpages, and includes some popular brands like Reebok and Ford. With Wirenode it takes about 5 minutes to get a mobile version of your site up and running, and it gives you features like mobile widgets, RSS mobilization, and mobile polls and forms.

5) WPtap delivers mobile themes/plugins that also can instantly convert your WordPress site into web-application experience when viewed from iPhone, iPod Touch, touch-based Blackberry, and Android smartphones. WPtap offers comprehensive mobile theme solutions for your WordPress website. It comes complete with all the standard WordPress blog features: search, login, categories, tags, archives, photos & more. WPtap also offers many customization features through a user-friendly WordPress admin panel.

6) MobiSiteGalore is a mobile website builder that allows you to easily build, publish & share a full-fledged mobile website that is guaranteed to work fine on any mobile phone. Design templates allow you to completely customize the colors, fonts and layout of the page to create a unique looking mobile version of your website.

7) bMobilized turns your website into mobile version really fast. It offers the fast conversion with comprehensive customization as an option available for you to tune the design well. bMobilized claims to support more than 13000 mobile devices, including all major brands. Also the more website you host using their service the higher the discount you get. So if you have a network of websites that needs conversion, bMobilized is the perfect service for you!

8) Onbile. Do you want to create a mobile version of your website quickly? Well, with 3 very simple steps and 5 minutes at hand you can! Onbile supports smartphones like iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. The only disadvantage here will be its limited templates, but their templates are generally awesome!
In general every solution has its ups and downs in mobile conversion. The pros are obvious: easier navigation, optimized user experience, and focused site content. The disadvantage, however,is that there will be limited advertisement space. And if your website exists with heavy and tantalizing graphics and you want it the same in mobile version, you might need to think to redesign the current site or abandon the conversion as the mobile website should be designed with minimalism in mind.

Thus consider carefully between the pros and cons, and make the wise decision whether it will benefit your users and you 🙂

Thank you for your attention!