Smartphones are everywhere and their plummeting price is encouraging people to have this amazing device in their hands. The rise of the smartphone has a direct impact on the ever-evolving mobile website design and development industry as an increasing number of people are now accessing Internet through it and that means, if you do not lose this huge chunk of traffic, you need to have a prominent presence in this sector. However, ensuring an impressive presence in different mobile devices is not an easy task by any means. But there is no need to get worried about it since there are some cool tools that can ease your problems to a certain extent:

mobiReady (ready.mobi/launch.jsp?locale=en_EN)
Based on the industry’s best practices and standards, mobiReady tool is giving its users a unique opportunity to evaluate whether their websites can be viewed perfectly in different mobile browsers or not. You can check out the score of your website before launching the mobile version of your website.

iBBDemo2 (labs.blackbaud.com/NetCommunity/article?artid=662)
This tool is good at replicating iPad and iPhone web browsing experience. You can test your website against different web apps. It can come in handy if you have to prepare a presentation to demo iOS web apps even when you do not have Mac desktop.

Opera Mini Simulator (opera.com/mobile/demo/)
You can check out how your website is likely to appear in Opera Mini before making it live. It works similar to that of any other mobile devices and thereby giving you an excellent opportunity to modify the look and feel of your mobile website.

iPadPeek (ipadpeek.com/)
This is another excellent tool that will let you know how you website is going to perform on a mobile phone based on 30 standard mobile web development practices. If you website score less than 3, you need to make some major changes to make it more mobile friendly.

iPhoney (marketcircle.com/iphoney/)
The name of this tool is somewhat misleading since iPhoney has little to do with iPhone simulation rather it is an effective tool that is employed by website designers and developers for creating websites of 480 by 320 pixels. You can treat it like a canvas to have a clear understanding of the visual quality of your designs.

W3C mobileOK Checker (validator.w3.org/mobile/)
This is probably the best tool on web that can help you determine mobile-friendliness of your website. W3C mobileOK Checker performs different tests to ensure mobile-friendliness of a website.

Mobile web design might not be your cup of tea but it is the latest trend that is too powerful to ignore. Just look around you and you will be in for a surprise. People are now finding mobile surfing more comfortable, easy and convenient than carrying their hefty laptop or so-called slimy netbook as the later option is almost next to impossible when you are on the fly. This is what has propelled the popularity of mobile web design in every sphere of our lives. But there are innumerable varieties of mobile phones available on the market, so how can you design a mobile website that will appeal to universal audience. Now, there is no simple answer to this problem and to make it worse, there are different mobile web browsers and operating systems that can make your life a misery. Here in this article, we are going to include some of the best examples of mobile website design and some practices that can help you to design a minuscule version of your existing website for the mobile maniacs.

Tips To Give Your Mobile Website a Fresh Look
Since the main objective of having a mobile website is to reach out to more people, you need to be a bit cautious while designing your website. Here are some issues that you should give adequate attention:

• Try to give it a dynamic look and do not try to feature all the elements in it.
• Give it space to breathe. Do not make it look like a visual garbage by incorporating all graphical elements.
• Try not to use flash because most of the mobile operating systems do not offer support for viewing flash files.
• Do not make it too heavy with glossy element since it will have detrimental impacts on your viewers.
• Try not to use long content as mobile user do not have much time to wade through long and boring content.
• Try to make your mobile website as user-friendly and search engine friendly as possible.

Start With A Bang
Do not bang your head against your PC while designing a mobile website since if you are finding it hard to get inspirations. Just start off with its probable structure and you will surely be able to do it finally. Do remember these things before jumping at a conclusion:

• Remember the screen size. It is small and that means you have to squeeze all the elements within the given space as far as possible.
• Do not toy with the concept of resolutions since it can mar your chances of seizing the attention of the viewers.
• Do not forget about the different operating systems such as iPhone platform, Windows Mobile, Android, Palm OS, Mobile Linux, Symbian OS phew.. there are so many of them. So before you launch the mobile version of your website, do not forget to check it in different platforms.
• The last commandment: Give your mobile website a smart look.

Now if you are still finding it difficult to get the hang of it, here are some amazing screen shots of some of the best mobile website designs that can inspire you greatly:

Video Mobile Website: Simple design that gives prominence to its call to action buttons. However, the design very much reflects the nature of this website. A truly vivid experience.

Mashable Mobile Web Design: A perfect example of how a social media major should look like in a smart phone. It truly tempts you to tweet the news. Go ahead and do it now.

McDonald Mobile Web Design: It has almost everything that you can expect from a McDonald outlet. A mouth-watering collection of fast-food. There is an option to look for nearest McDonald shop right from its mobile version.

CNN Mobile Website Design: CNN mobile website looks elegant and the focus is solely on the content.

Coosh Mobile Website Design: If you have a thing for graphics, this website will certainly make you say Wow.

Intel Mobile Web Design: With an oxymoronic tag line “Today Is So Yesterday”, Intel’s mobile website is certainly going to rock you. Its white background is something to take note of.

Today, we can use our mobile phones as a resourceful medium to connect to the Internet quickly. Whether we are looking for a fashion website or a real estate one, we can easily browse websites in the little device.

There has been a complete shift from the traditional aspect of website designing in the recent times. Mobile web designs are becoming more popular due to the increasing figure of users who access the web from mobile sets.

In fact, the new trend of web designing has changed the scenario of the web industry. Now, more and more websites owners are opting for mobile web designs to invite the target audience all over the world.

What is mobile web design?

We are very much familiar with the terms like simple HTML web designs, flash website etc. Now, a new website design has created a huge buzz in the web industry. Continue reading ‘Mobile Web Design and Its Prospects’ »