Recommendations for your Mobile Website

With the Mobile Internet exploding, you should seriously consider having a business presence on the mobile platform. What makes a great mobile website?  We all have our own criteria, but basically, here are some recommendations most would agree on: 

• Reliable
• Quick to load
• Easy to browse

This latter requirement, “Easy to browse” differs slightly, when it comes to mobiles.  It means the navigation buttons should be simple, easy to see and the amount of interaction (i.e. clicking and entering data) you have to do, should be the absolute minimum.

And if it’s a mobile version of a well-established website, as many components as possible should be the same (or a simplified version), making it familiar and friendly to use.

Best Mobile Websites

Here are some examples of mobile website that are enjoyable and easy to use for most mobiles.

1.       Firstly there is m.facebook.com. You can basically use it exactly the way you would on computer.

2.       Next, is m.amazon.com.  Amazon has espoused the credo: “Keep It Very, Very Simple”. What this means in actual fact is that (providing you already have an Amazon account set up) you can purchase goods directly, using your mobile.

3.       Another example is google.com/xhtml – you can personalize it for your mobile, as well as access weather, movie times, news, and local searches.  (A GPS, though, it’s not!)

4.       Another personal favourite is from Darren Rowse’s. Problogger.net has gone mobile (using the WPTouch plug-in, so you don’t even have to lift a finger to view it properly in your mobile screen.)

5.       Lastly, mobile Wikipedia (wapedia.mobi/en) – entertaining and handy if you want to look something up in a spare moment.

Although these are all large, mainstream sites, more and more unique, individual sites will go mobile in the near future.

Does your Blog Need a Mobile WordPress Plug-in?

If you have a WordPress blog, don’t assume it will translate perfectly to mobile. Chances are, it has at least 2 columns, and runs ads, graphics and is set for a screen width that’s about 760 px wide.

Besides, even if it was able to load in and emerge with a readable format, you need to remember that many people are paying heavily for each megabyte downloaded on their mobiles (not to mention for the time)… and they’re not going to wait twenty minutes for all your graphics and plug-ins to load.

One superb and very user-friendly plug in is WordPress Mobile edition. If you can’t find it by searching the plug-in section via your blog Dashboard, you can easily download it from WordPress.org’s plug-in section. (It even allows comments – something that is often a problem.)

Mobile Website with Advertising or customization

If you want to display ads, the Mippin Mobilize plug-in (also found at WordPress.org) is a configuration-free plug in. It works by redirecting other mobile users to Mippin’s rendering of your blog. This is a nice plug-in, because it scales photographs to conform to your mobile site visitor’s screen width, and converts videos to 3G format.

If you’d rather customize your blog theme, a plug-in you might like is MobilePress. This one isn’t available at WordPress.org, but you can find it on its home site, mobilepress.co.za/.  It’s biggest benefit: Allowing you to use customized themes, and it also allows specific themes for the iPhone, as well as the Opera Mini browser and Windows CE Mobile. (Surprisingly simple to install!)

So there you have it:  3 fantastic plug-ins to help your WordPress blog go mobile. Please comment and share which plug-ins you find are useful for Mobile Websites.