Within the past few years, it has now become common place to have some sort of internet access on mobile phones. Whether it be for satellite navigation, simple email processing, or full access to the world wide web, this new technology is clearly here to stay. Most of the mainstream, popular websites have already made the transition to mobile, as well as some smaller personal websites.

“Web-based applications that work across desktop, mobile and soon, TV screens, are the norm and not the exception these days” – Alec East, Director of Do Tank Studios.

Who uses them?

Some examples of website that have already made the transition:

Nike Bootcamp (created by AKQA)

Unilever – Lynx Effect (created by BBH)
- recieved a yellow pencil in the 2008 D&AD mobile marketing award.

Tohato (created by Hakuhodo)
- recieved a yellow pencil in the 2008 D&AD mobile marketing award.

Volkswagen

The Times

eBay.co.uk

So how does this affect you? As someone whom may only have a small personal website or run a large organisation selling products or services, you could be missing out on potential visitors to your website by neglecting this media type. Mobile phone websites were the fastest growing sector online with a 58 percent increase in Unique UK Visitors from 7.7 million in July 2008 to 12.2 million in July 2009. According to research done for Toyota, it was apparent that adding mobile to your online campaign provides more than 40% lift on branding alone. Can you really afford to miss out?

There are already a lot of resources already available to help make the transition from your current website, to a version suitable for many types of existing mobile platforms. So there is no time like the present to get started!

How to create them?

“If you are familiar with designing games for Flash, then Flash Lite shouldn’t present any major issues for you. Similarly, if you can design CSS-driven sites in Dreamweaver, it should be very simple to adapt your design focus for mobile screen sizes.” – Alec East.

Some great resources to get you started:

Wapple.net
Build and develop optimized mobile web sites, campaigns and applications

Mofuse.com
Build a mobile site, in minutes – Choose the right platform for your needs and you can build and launch your mobile site using our very intuitive & simple to use tools.

Winksite.com
Winksite is the first standards-compliant mobile Website builder that also includes RR-driven content deployment and mobile-tuning community features such as forum, chat, and polls.

mobiSiteGalore
mobiSiteGalore’s new mobile edition now makes it possible for you to build a complete mobile website all by yourself, with just your mobile phone.

• Have you created a mobile website? Was it as simple as it sounds? We would love to hear your feedback!

Further Reading

7 usability guildelines for websites on mobile devices
Coding for the mobile web
Designing and developing mobile web sites in the read world, part 1
Design for mobiles
Designing for mobile web
Handset Detection – allows you to build websites which adapt to the browsing device
mobiForge – the world’s largest independent mobile development community
Mobile web design trends for 2009
The 5-minute CSS mobile makeover
The anatomy of an iPhone site
The mobile web – Vital for social networking; important for everyone else