8 Tools for Easily Creating a Mobile Version of Your Website

repost:

by: Jacob Gube
(Mashable)

As an entrepreneur, you're most likely always on the lookout for new developments. Perhaps your customers are reporting that your site needs a mobile version so that they can visit it while they're on the go, or maybe you recently saw a competitor's site through your mobile device; it looked slick, and now you're feeling outclassed.

The mobile web is burgeoning. Usage of iOS, the operating system for Apple mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad, almost doubled in just seven months (from March 2010 to October 2010), according to Netmarketshare. This is an indicator of just how many people are browsing websites, more and more, through their mobile devices instead of their computers.

Small businesses should be on top of this trend. To help out, we've compiled a list of easy-to-use tools for creating mobile sites. The tools in this list were purposely chosen for ease of use -- that is, they're all aimed at site owners who don't have any web development/coding experience. They're perfect solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses because of their cost effectiveness (and most are even free).


How These Tools Work

Most of the tools below have graphical user interfaces and copy-and-paste code blocks that can be installed on your site quite easily. If you can install a tool like Google Analytics on your site yourself, you'll be able to use these tools.

These tools work by detecting the user agent of your site visitors, which is just fancy talk for finding out whether a visitor is using a regular web browser or a mobile web browser. If the user agent is a mobile browser, users are redirected to your website's mobile version. The common practice is to assign the mobile version of your site with a sub-domain as such m.yourwebsite.com. In this manner, your site traffic is forked into two segments, giving all of your site visitors an optimal...

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