5 Steps to Build Your Mobile Website
If you own a website such as online store website, do consider to make one mobile version of it. Why? It’s simply because more and more people are connecting to the Internet from their mobile phone compared to laptop. Building up a mobile version of your website is not that difficult, but there are quite a number of items that need to be taken into considerations such as certain mobile phone inability to support Javascript which is often used in normal website. Besides, screen sizes of different mobile phone should be taken into consideration. Below are main and important steps which you can follow if you like to build up your own mobile website:
1. Planning
Before starting to design your mobile website, take into consideration of the layout, design and construction. This is because you need to change these 3 elements to make it suitable for the mobile phone screen. Keep all the information on the top page and minimize the left/right key navigation as well as usage of tables. Graphics should also be kept as minimum as possible in order to avoid slow content loading on mobile phone. And, of course make sure the page size is small and the design is simple. The content construction on the mobile website should be easy to read and navigate.
2. Coding
Good choices of markup language for building up mobile websites are XML and XHTML, depends on the target market.
3. Validating
Ensure that your coding is valid by using online validator. Codes that are valid are more likely to be delivered correctly to all mobile devices. Some examples of validator sare Mobile-friendly XHTML Validator (W3C), Mobile-readiness checker (.mobi), mobileOK Basic Checker (TAW) and WuRML (shadowplay.net).
4. Emulating
Once you have confirmed that your codes are valid, you can test your mobile website on various kinds of mobile device platforms using web-based emulators such as XHTML Mobile Profile (Firefox plug-in), wmlbrowser (Firefox plug-in), i-mode emulator (DoCoMo) and Mobile emulator (.mobi). If you have actual mobile devices, you can test your new mobile website so that you will be able to experience it on actual condition and from that, you can know any weak point of your mobile website.
5. Maintaining
In order to attract mobile users to visit your mobile website, ensure that you always update it with latest information and always keep it simple yet attractive.
So, why wait? If you own a website, modify it for mobile usage today since more and more people are getting connected to the Internet via their mobile phones.
Anna has been writing articles online for nearly 3 years now. You might want to take a look at WebsiteForMobile.org if you are interested in getting a mobile website for your business. This company provides professional mobile websites solution at low cost.