How to Build a Mobile Website (2023)

• Home
• Web Design
• Learn How to Build a Mobile Website

Asking this question is critical, because if your company doesn’t have a site compatible with mobile devices, it’s likely that you’re losing a high number of potential customers.

Fortunately, there’s a solution. By updating or building a mobile website, you can capture all of the customers and leads that you otherwise would’ve lost to your competitors. Keep reading to learn how to build a mobile website, plus learn about the challenges that come with building a mobile site!

How to build a mobile website in 3 steps

Are you ready to learn how to build a mobile website for your business?

Get started with these three, easy-to-follow steps:

1. Choose how you will design your mobile website

Before you start building your mobile site, you need to choose how you will design your website. When creating mobile websites, companies can choose between a few approaches. These approaches come with different benefits, challenges, and costs.

Your options include:

• Responsive web design

Aresponsive web designuses adaptable layouts, which means you can have a website that appears almost the same on desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. Your content and your design adapts itself to a user’s device automatically.

• Adaptive web design

An adaptive web design uses unique layouts for devices, which means your website features different designs or versions for desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. You deliver different experiences to users, based on their device, and may even maintain three separate websites to accomplish this task.

While you can choose either responsive or adaptive web design,responsive design is becoming the go-to choicefor businesses. That’s because a responsive design allows you to provide a consistent experience to users. Plus, you maintain a single site.

2. Pick your website builder, designer, or agency

Next, your team needs to choose how you want to create a mobile site.

Do you want to hire a freelance designer or a professional web design agency to build your site? Or, do you want to use a website builder and make it yourself? The choice is yours, and each option offers different advantages and disadvantages.

No matter which one you choose, you want to make sure you compare your options.

• Web designer

Aweb designercan help your business create a fresh and functional website for mobile and desktop users. Their design experience can improve the usability and look of your site, which are critical factors when it comes to how people interact with your website, like when deciding to make a purchase.

If you decide to work with a web designer, however, you will need to have a decent budget. If you set a low budget, it can result in a subpar designer and broken website, which you don’t want. Research web designers in your area and get some custom quotes.

• Web design agency

A web design agency can also help your company launch an attractive and easy-to-use website. The advantage of partnering with a web design agency, however, is that you often get access to a team of designers and developers, which can make a massive difference in the look and speed of your site.

In most cases, established web design agencies can also offer lower rates than professional web designers. That’s because they feature the necessary talent to create and build mobile websites fast, which allows them to take on additional projects.

If you decide to partner with aweb design agency, follow an approach similar tohiring a web designer. Request a custom quote, browse their portfolio, and meet with their team to see how they can help your company build a mobile website that generates sales and phone calls.

• Website builder

A website builder can help your business create and launch a desktop- and mobile-friendly website too. These builders can range fromWordPresstoWix, and while free, most companies will eventually invest in the paid version to access additional features.

For example, to use your unique domain, you will need to maintain a monthly subscription.

While website builders provide your company complete control over the web design and web development process, they also limit the capabilities of your site. You will often rely on templates, for example, which can stop you from accessing the kind of functionalities you want in a website.

Once you decide how to build a mobile website, whether with a designer, agency, or website builder, you can begin the process. Remember to research each option in-depth. That way, your business can make the best decision for your site, budget, and ideal website visitor.

3. Start building your mobile website

Now that you’ve chosen your website builder, web designer, or web design agency, you can start building your mobile website. This process will likely include some trial-and-error. If you partner with a designer or agency, for instance, they may create mockups for you to review.

As you go about creating your mobile website, remember these key best practices for mobile sites:

• Finger compatibility.Can someone tap all the links on your site?
• Vertical scrolling.Can someone use their thumb to read all of a page?
• Top-loaded pages.Is your most important information at the top of each page?
• Extra graphics.Can you remove any unnecessary images or videos?
• Large form fields.Can someone tap a form field with their thumb?
• Minimal form requirements.Do youabsolutelyneed all of the information you require in form fields?
• Modern code.Are you usingHTML5 code?

Before you launch the finalized version of your mobile and desktop site, make sure you test it. You want to provide website visitors with a seamless experience, and if they run into issues, they may not bother coming back.

With testing and preparation, though, you can launch a functional and good-lucking website!

4 examples of mobile web design

Need some mobile web design examples before building your mobile site? Check out these four examples:

1. Youtube

None of this is difficult – but it can be time consuming if you’ve never dealt with these elements before.

However, the payoff is huge. Google ranks fast-loading sites high in search results. It also uses mobile-compatibility as a ranking signal for your site. So when you have a mobile website that loads quickly, you can be sure you’re ranking well in Google search results.

Those rankings may not happen overnight, but your users will notice right away. After all, there’s a huge difference between a site that takes 10 seconds to load and one that loads instantly.

One of the most extreme ways to reduce load time on your mobile site is to useaccelerated mobile pages, or AMP. This is a simplified coding language that helps Google read, understand, and recommend your pages more easily.

AMP also helps pages load instantly on mobile devices.

When building a mobile website, you need to think about the load time of your site. Whether you partner with a designer or agency, or use a website builder, you need to make sure your website delivers a fast experience for users. Otherwise, they won’t bother purchasing your products, completing your contact form, or visiting your business.

How to choose your mobile web designer

It can be overwhelming to learn how to build a mobile website. That’s why many businesses decide to partner with a web designer or web design agency. If you decide to outsource building your mobile site, there are a few things you should consider to make the choice a little easier. In order to make the right selection, you’ll need to know:

• Your budget
• Your website goals
• Your company goals
• Your industry
• How all of them work together

Most of these factors make sense. You need to know how much money you have to spend, what you want to achieve online, and how you want your business to grow. But why is it important to know your industry?

The truth is, mobile web design helps some industries more than others, and it’s important to know and understand the potential ROI of a mobile site before investing in one for your business.

In order to determine the benefits of a mobile site for your industry, it’s so crucial to understand how it’s represented online.

For example, if you’re in an industry where your competitors haven’t updated their websites since 1998, mobile web design will be a miracle for your site in terms of Google search results and user-friendliness.

But if you’re one of the last companies in your industry to get a mobile website, you may notice lower returns. But that’s not a bad thing – you’ll still earn a great ROI from investing in a mobile website.

It simply comes down to howmuchof an ROI you’ll earn. No matter what, launching a mobile website will always get your business some level of ROI.

How much does building a mobile website cost?

Building a mobile website can cost anywhere from $1400 to $2800 or more. How much your business pays for a professional designer or web design agency to create your responsive site depends on your website’s size, preferred project turnaround time, and more.

If you’re curious about our mobile website design pricing, you can view our prices and plans below:

View Mobile Website Pricing

At WebFX, we have an award-winning team of web designers that strive to give our clients the absolute best results. We’ve evenwon numerous awardsfor our accomplishments. Those awards translate to high-quality websites, improved website traffic, and more customers for our clients — all of which can help any business grow.

Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Get afree quote for building a mobile sitefor your business now!

Are you ready to build a mobile website?

Now that you’ve had a crash course in mobile web design, it’s time to put your knowledge in action!

WebFX is here to give you the support you need. Our award-winning team of designers, marketers, and developers will make a website for your business that’ll help you stand out against your competitors.

All you have to do is contact us!