Having your site mobile compatible nowadays is something you should no longer ignore. Recent studies reveal that as much of 40% of mobile users turn to competitors sites, after having a bad mobile experience. People around the world are slowly but surely catching up with the mobile mania, and if you are in business, its now more than ever important, to ensure that your site is mobile compatible.
Now, there are some options that you can do, to make your site mobile friendly. If you are on WordPress, you can make use of plugins or use responsive themes to solve your problem. The first option is not as easy as it seems, and real good plugins make cost you. In addition, that’s another plugin that could hamper your WordPress sites performance. The second option is viable, if you are just beginning or if your site is not heavily customized. Ideally, you would have your site running normally with your chosen theme when people visit you while on their normal PCs or laptops, and another, if they are visiting you from their mobile devices.
Now here’s the good news. Google officially announced today that they teamed up with DudaMobile to release a free mobile site builder. Here’s an excerpt of the announcement:
Google can help. We recently teamed up with DudaMobile to release a free mobile site builder. In three easy steps you’re able to get started with mobile: (1) enter your site’s URL, (2) customize your site and (3) redirect mobile users automatically to the new mobile-friendly version. It’s free and takes just a few minutes to complete!
I’ve gone through the process already and indeed, it did not take that much of time to set it up. While Google mentions that it is free, Dudamobile clarifies that the service is free, for one whole year, and thereafter, you will be charged $9 a month should you wish to continue using the service. No need to submit payment details – No strings attached. Don’t know about you, but I think it is a sweat deal and one year from now, who knows what can happen… One thing I know is that I don’t want to loose business to competitors. Not this way at least :).
That being said, here’s a quick view of how to set up your site for mobile compatibility, using this service:
Go to free mobile site builder. Once there, enter your sites URL and you will be taken to the first step which is to choose your theme. There are many to choose from and you can further tweak its design on the next steps.
After choosing the theme, next step will be to tweak your design. There are several options from the menu. Upload your logo, change background colors, text and font sizes, setup special links you want to, etc. Many options indeed.
Next will be to save your changes.
Next step is to copy the code provided and paste it right under your <head> tag. This code ensures that redirection is properly done when someone visits your site from a mobile device. Once that done, your are now live. Yay!
Preview your new “mobile site” on several simulators provided, to see if you are happy with it.
UPDATE: I continued to play with the site builder early today and decided to change the look and feel of my website. Here’s a quick video presentation, that I decided to make to better illustrate what you can do with this free mobile site builder.
That’s it! The cool thing about this service is that you can set your mobile version independently. Also, you can edit your settings anytime and as much as you want to. Cool! Go mobile now.
What say you? Have you heard about this service yet? Do you think that this is something that will be of interest to you? Let’s discuss..
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The free mobile site builder is certainly something of interest with mobile internet use on the rise. Strange that Google says a free mobile site builder, while the site says free for 1 year or 9 dollars per month afterward. Like you said though, who knows what can happen in a year down the road. Definitely something to look into.
Hi Ray. No doubt that the service is very interesting. I think Google mentioned “free”, with the same mentality as like I was saying. One year from now is a long time, or maybe it is a “great” elevator pitch 🙂 Let me know if you use it. I would be very interested in knowing what “other” stuff you can find there that could be useful. There are a lot of things I have yet to explore.
Aasma
I think it’s certainly a great deal, after all $9 for 1 year is not a big deal. As far as service is concerned it seems very promising.
Hi Aasma. Atually it is $9 per month. Still reasonable though, specially if you find out that there are many users visiting your site from their mobile devices.
Aasma
Sorry, I written it wrong. Though my intention was $9 per month. 😉 thanks for correcting.
Markus
A free mobile site builder? Now that would really be nice. Even the monthly payments after the free period is reasonable.
I agree. It is not wise to let go of a $108 offer, lol. And as you said, the monthly fee is very reasonable. Something that one should not worry about deciding anything until you can analyze 11 months of data 🙂
Great tips Francisco! I really like it! It’s awesome tool… I will try it on my blog. Thanks!
John
Glad you liked it John. I also got excited yesterday and quickly created a mobile version of my site. Looking good so far and one thing that I did not mention here is that after setting it all up, go back to settings and tweak it a bit more for SEO and include your Google Analytics code in there. It would be nice to see what kind of traffic you will get deriving from mobile users. Nice data to play with 🙂
There are more options to explore and perhaps, I will eventually either update this post or create a new one entirely, lol.
Nice! I can see it now from my smartphone. Cool! The pencil is a little bit awkward, you might try another image?
Hi John. I actually changed the theme today. If you get the chance, let me know which one you think is better 🙂
Much better now. I would suggest (just a personal opinion), the first two articles to be regular size as you have all the articles to the end because when I first scrolled down I thought it was an advertisement on how to make your site mobile… etc.. Just a thought. The colors / design / mobility are excellent.
-John
Sorry for the delay. Thta’s a great suggestion.. will see if there is a way I can change that.. How’s your site doing? Have you created your mobile site yet 🙂
It’s going good. I am changing the design too, trying to make it better and publish articles more interesting to the visitors. Creativity is all that we need. Visitors need to see something new… It’s where I focus now.
Kostas
Many thanks for sharing this Francisco, actually from google analytics I know that 6-8% of the visitors on my blog are mobile users so it would be really great if my blog was mobile friendly, I will certainly try it and see how it works, thanks again…
Hi Kostas. That’s good to know. 6 – 8% is quite substantial actually and if this solution can give your users a better experience, all the better. Let me know how it goes for you. Try testing your site using “website template” instead of blogs. See video here that I just added 🙂
Traffic on my blog is generally 50% from mobile. So it is very necessary that I search some good mobile builder and I can to this page. I am trying this builder tonight and hope that my website looks good and elegant
50% traffic from mobile users is very substantial. Hope this builder helps your users get a better experience. How’s that going so far, btw.
Becca
Not bad the $9 after using it in 1 year for free. At least they will prove it first
that it is worth it for business to manage your site on mobile.
Good point Becca. Think of it as a “free trial” for one whole year. Not bad at all 🙂
Anton Koekemoer
Wow – Looks like a great tool to use to build a mobile site. Thanks for sharing. Will be sure to have a more in depth look for myself.
Hi Anton. I think that this is a great alternative, specially if your theme is not responsive or using a plugin to make your site mobile friendly. In only a matter of days, I have already seen some improvements in my analytics from mobile users. Then again, it may be because of this post 🙂
Dawn
I have always wanted to make a mobile version of my site but was afraid of its difficulty. This seems pretty easy to do
Holly Jahangiri
This is the first I’d heard of it!
I may have to give it a try. Mine looks fine on MY mobile (the ones that don’t are usually the ones with pop-ups or the ones that are heavy on javascript functionality) but mine may not look good on every mobile. I should probably optimize it.
Hi Holy. Glad to know you heard about it here first 🙂 The good thing about this mobile site builder is you can customize the look, feel and behavior completely independent of your current sites theme. You can delete, exclude anything that you don’t want to function while a user is browsing your site via a mobile device. If you visit my site on a mobile phone right now, you will notice that I don’t even have ads showing, for now at least 🙂
Tanya Smith Lorenz
Thanks for this post Francisco – very timely. I think here in the UK mobile viewing of sites is still very early days, but it’s great to have this tool. I think I’ll have a go and play around with it – for £5 /mo after year one, I think that’s quite reasonable. It was something I’d been putting off thinking it would be too complicated, needing lots of coding etc.
cheers!
Hi Tanya. That’s interesting to know that in your side of the world, mobile viewing is still not “that popular”. In any event, I think it is just a matter of time until it does and in this case, it is great, because you have a lot of time to prepare your site when it happens 🙂 Try this tool.. it is amazing and really easy. No coding required, just creativity 😉 Let me know how it goes for you.
Videonations
Sounds like a great tool – just wondering how easy it would be to incorporate video and other media? We’re currently developing our mobile website and would be good to see mobile working alongside our other video conferencing tools -I’ll give it a try!
Derek
Yeah i came accross this stuff some time ago
it supports adsense and thats a great feature
And that one year stuff is jst awesome
Nwosu Desmond
As much as i will like to use awesome plugins as this to make my mobile sites, i have a greater preference for responsive designs as i don’t have to make individual webpages for different devices.