Google Sites Gets a Mobile Website Builder

Last week, Google introduced a new option for Google Sites users which enabled them to serve a mobile-optimized version to users visiting from smartphones. Now Google is taking it one step further with five mobile templates to choose from and the possibility of creating your own with no coding skills requirement.

"A poor mobile web experience can negatively shape a consumer’s opinion of your brand or your company altogether," Google said.

"In a recent study, we found that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site that they had trouble accessing from their phone, and 40% go to a competitor’s," Google's pitch continued.

"Today, we’re excited to announce a brand new tool to help your business get 'mobile'-ized: Google Sites mobile landing pages. With Google Sites mobile landing pages, you can build yourself a professional mobile landing page in minutes for free—and without any coding experience," it announced.

If you're already a Sites user, you should be familiar with the concept. The new mobile landing pages enable anyone to create a mobile site for their business.

While Sites is open for all, it's part of the Apps suite and is aimed mostly at small businesses, regularly lacking the resources or expertise to create their own sites from scratch.

Google provides five templates to get you started, based around the most common goals and needs of the most likely users. If the provided templates, like Restaurant, Lead Generation and Social, aren't enough, there is also a custom template option.

There's no coding involved in creating the mobile sites, if you can create a document you can use the mobile Sites tool. The tool as well as the service is free, so anyone can try it out. The mobile version is also separate from the regular desktop Sites websites you may have.