Mobile phone use is growing by leaps and bounds around the world, and every day more people access the web from their phones. I recently spent about an hour to create a mobile-friendly version of my blog. I am going to show you how I did it in the next few paragraphs.
What users want and don’t want in a mobile site
When accessing the web from their phone, users want easy navigation with only a few options, pages that render fast, and quick access to the content. They usually don’t want sidebars, menus with a hundred different options, icons and banners, and excessive formatting.
Where to start
I used a service called Mofuse, which makes creating a mobile site a snap. Go to mofuse.com and sign up for an account. You will be prompted to choose a sub-domain. You can choose yoursite to get a URL such as yoursite.mofuse.mobi
Next, you’ll be prompted to add your RSS feed. Mofuse will take your feed and make it the default home page of your new mobile site; it will show as a collection of links, starting with your most recent post, more or less like this:
Customizing your mobile site
I didn’t want my mobile site to default to my RSS feed. Instead, I decided to create a menu with three different options: Blog, About and Contact.
To do this, take a look at the Your Mobile Content section of your control panel’s right sidebar, click on the link to your RSS feed, and change the title to “Blog”.
Next, go to the Add Content section in the sidebar and click on the Add a New Page link to create your About page (you can put a picture of yourself with a brief paragraph about you or your elevator pitch). Do the same to create your Contact page.
After you do this, Mofuse will automatically create the menu and it will show in your mobile site’s homepage.
Finally, go back to the Your Mobile Content section and organize the three links in the order you want. This is how they look on my mobile blog:
Adding a logo
Go to the Make It Unique section of the sidebar, click on Your Logo, and upload it. If you want a tagline to go with it, go the the Add Content section and click on the Edit Homepage link. Then, just type your tagline. This is how it looks on my mobile site:
Using your own domain
Mofuse gives you the option of using your own domain or sub-domain. The universally accepted convention is to create a subdomain of your main site using just the letter “m”. For me, it is: m.shoestringbranding.com. To create it:
- Go to your domain registrar or hosting account control panel and edit the DNS records to create an alias called m.yoursite.com and point it to yoursite.mofuse.mobi. (if this sounds too technical to do by yourself, email tech support with your request).
- Go back to the Make It Unique section on your Mofuse control panel and click on the Custom Domain link, to set it up as m.yoursite.com.
Remove advertising
By default, Mofuse will show small Google Adsense ads at the top and/or bottom of your mobile pages. You can remove them by clicking on the Monetize link in the Other section of the sidebar and unchecking the box next to “Yes, I want to make money with my mobile site”.
You also have the option to remove the “Powered by Mofuse” icon from the bottom of your pages, but I decided to leave it, since I’m extremely happy with the service and wouldn’t mind more people knowing about it.
Publicizing your mobile site
Click on the Mobi Badge link in the Promote/Integrate section of your control panel’s right side bar and choose one of the “mobile-friendly” icons. Get the HTML and paste in on your blog’s sidebar, to let people know that you have a mobile friendly site.
If you want to get really technical, generate a QR code for your mobile blog and put it in your stationary or other printed material. QR codes are two-dimensional bar codes that can be read by mobile phones. Go to this page and type in your mobile site URL to generate your QR code.
Mine looks like this:
To enable your mobile phone to read QR codes, you need to download a QR-Code reader. Once you do that, the reader will turn your camera phone into a scanner: just take a picture of your QR code and you will automatically be transported to your mobile site.
That’s all there is to it. I hope this brief tutorial is clear enough and that it encourages you to build your mobile-friendly blog. Let me know how it goes.
How do you use your mobile phone blogging for monetizing? Will you post on that subject? How do people find you on their mobile phone? Or are these dumb questions?
@Adele:
Those are very valid questions. My intention with this post was just to show how to make content more accessible.
While I’m not an expert on mobile marketing, you could monetize your mobile content in conjunction with your QR codes.
Let’s say that you’re selling something online and you create a flyer with a QR code. Whoever scans the QR code in the flyer can be transported to a landing page where they can purchase your product.
The easiest way for people to find your mobile site is through a link on your main site, or by creating a QR code that people can scan to be transported to your site.
Mobile marketing is still in its infancy and I’m sure there will be a lot to learn in the next few months. I’ll be keeping my eyes open and post about any development that may be interesting our useful.
This was really useful and interesting – I’ve been thinking about doing this for quite some time – may have to follow your process.
Great information. I may just follow these tips and make CareerJockey.org mobile phone friendly. Thanks a lot.
Nice post! GA is also my biggest earning. However, it’s not a much.
,..] http://www.shoestringbranding.com is one another relavant source on this subject,..]
Maybe you could edit the page name Create a Mobile-Friendly Version of your Blog Shoestring Branding to more suited for your webpage you make. I liked the post however.
When it comes to converting content to a mobile version the result can leave you wanting more. It may not come out perfect all the time but this is so much simpler. Go MoFuse.
I believed i was extremely pleased to disclose this type of web-site.Need be you can excellent at the part of the time documented in enthusiasm of this specific incredible impute which will!! The most likely getting almost every online touch trace of computer and i share individuals saved that will around tangible bushy-tailed goods most people post.
yes. you can print your qr code on many places. book .ad. ticket.
it can highly publicize your product.
you can visit”www.onbarcode”website.
they provide excellent goods.barcode reader. barcode generator. free barcode scanner.
i had bought one.
very good.