New service makes mobile-friendly web sites obtainable by small businesses.
Last week at HostingCon I caught up with Patti Kelly, director of product management at Verisign, to discuss the launch of a new product that makes it easy for small businesses to create a mobile friendly version of their web site.
VeriSign MobileView uses mobile detection and redirection to render mobile friendly web sites while keeping the same domain name that customers already use.
The key is simplicity. MobileView was created for small businesses who have small marketing budgets and little technical expertise. It’s offered through VeriSign’s partners, so a registrar can offer it to its existing client base.
MobileView automatically creates a mobile friendly display of an existing web site, but users can edit it through an online console. (Users can also create a separate, mobile-only web site from scratch).
If the customers’ web host supports MobileView then they won’t have to edit their existing site’s HTML.
This is one key difference between VeriSign’s offering and dotMobi’s GoMobi. GoMobi users either need to use a separate URL or edit their web site’s HTML to enter a mobile browser detection script.
To gain adoption, VeriSign is offering the service free to its partners on VeriSign managed domains (e.g. .com and .net) through December 2012. Partners can mark the cost up as they please.
Hi Andrew,
I just wanted to pick up on a couple of points regarding goMobi:
When you use goMobi through your web host, you do not need a separate domain. goMobi sites will work seamlessly with your existing domain without any need to edit your desktop site’s HTML code.
Of course, one of the advantages of goMobi is its flexibility – you can use goMobi with any domain you want. It’s not dependent on a desktop site. So if you want to redirect to a goMobi site say for a specific product campaign, or because that site is hosted by another provider, you can do that too. We provide redirection code in a variety of web languages to cover all the options.
Martin Clancy
Marketing Manager
dotMobi
Thanks Martin. The F.A.Q. on the GoMobi.com web site didn’t mention this as an option. I appreciate your clarification.
Exactly what everyone* has been saying for years… why buy a mobi domain when a com will do just fine. In other words, mobi was never needed and never will be needed.
* everyone = people with common domain sense and those not looking to line their pockets from mobi registrations.
In regards to Steve’s comments:
The point of the .mobi domain is to identify content that is designed to work on mobile phones. The rationale is not technical; it’s contextual. In the same way that, say, amazon.fr and amazon.de represent specific contexts for an Amazon experience (in French or audiences in France and in German for audiences in Germany), amazon.mobi says “An Amazon experience designed for mobile phones.”
At this point, the .mobi domain is five years old, has well over 1MM current registrations and is the sixth largest gTLD in the world. As the mobile Web has grown, so has the desire to identify mobile-ready context. If there were really no use for the .mobi domain, I’m doubtful the domain would have continued is ongoing growth and use.