Imagine coming across a business website that is impossibly hard to navigate, takes forever to load and just doesn’t fit your monitor. That probably isn’t a business you’d be patronizing, is it? Sadly, this is exactly what happens to a lot of potential customers when they visit a site on their mobile devices. Unless you’ve been living under a rock at the bottom of the Mariana Trench you’ve probably heard the dizzying statistics about the growth of mobile web usage. With 20% of all web traffic in the US coming from mobile devices (a number that is growing quickly), people are looking for your business on their mobile devices and expect a website designed to make their experience easy.
Unfortunately, the cost of building a good mobile site can be prohibitive for many startup businesses as they just don’t have the resources to invest in building two versions of their website. There are, however some great, low cost options out there to get you started such as the following 3 solutions to get your very own mobile website for the low.
Weebly
Weebly offers complete, easy DIY website solutions and all of their themes come with mobile versions. This is a great solution for business that don’t already have a desktop site, or perhaps looking to replace their current one, as you could kill two birds with one stone. Weebly’s themes are, for the most part, clean and easy to navigate on both desktop and mobile devices. A downside may be the difficulty in customizing them but for the most part they offer a great out of the box solution.
GoMo by Google
Google’s “GoMo” initiative is a serious push to get businesses to go mobile (GoMo) including a free site builder. The service is simple to use and draws from your current site to suggest themes and match its colors. The service doesn’t have a large selection of templates and lacks a little on some of the widgets that are popular on mobile site but overall offers a great solution for budget conscious entrepreneurs.
Dudamobile
If you like Google’s service then you may also want to check out Duda, Google’s partner on their mobile website creator. Duda offers the same simple site converter as Google in addition to a premium service that allows unlimited pages and page views, unique domains and “premium” plug-ins, all for 9.99/month or 7.99 with a year subscription.
True, the above options don’t offer the same level of customizations and bells and whistles as a bespoke product built to your specific qualifications but for those just trying to get their foot into the mobile door they provide some great choices. The important thing is to get your mobile presence established as any business that isn’t mobile ready is behind the times. Entrepreneurs are always looking for an opportunity to connect better with their potential customers and the mobile web provides just that, so be sure to take advantage of it by offering the best experience possible.
Ibrahim consults small and large businesses, not for profits and other organizations on mobile strategy. He’s a fan of technology, entrepreneurship and warm weather. Follow him on twitter @ialamin
Image Credit: Shutterstock.com
