Strikingly – Create Beautiful Sites Optimized for Mobile in less than 30 minutes!

Since the advent of the internet owning a website, either for Personal use or for Business, is a norm in today’s world. You can learn to develop your own site  using the various tools to host your website on the net, or use content management services (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, etc that help you easily build your site. But with the explosion of mobile devices, more users now browse the web through their iPhones, Androids, many other mobile devices. The current services providers have not fully jumped to the mobile bandwagon, with their sits poorly rendered on the mobile browsers. With the new touch interface, most of the features in the current websites become obsolete on the mobile browsers. A group of game developers realized this problem, and launched a startup through the Y-Combinator called Strikingly, which makes developing mobile websites a 30 minute affair!

Screen Shot 2013-03-13 at 9.30.21 PM

Strikingly is similar to providers like WordPress, Blogger. It allows you to build your own personal site, a site for your portfolio or business without much effort. Where Strikingly is different from other providers is that all of the sites you build through it are optimized for mobile platforms. In fact the creators of Strikingly have taken a different approach to building a site – conventional web developers code their site for the Desktops, then port their sites to the mobile. Strikingly have taken the mobile first approach, that they build the sites for the mobile and then translate that experience to the bigger screens. The result is some of the most beautiful sites one can build with minimum effort.

Strikingly - Template Page

After setting up an account in Strikingly, you are greeted to the Dashboard. Strikingly defines three types of sites that the user can create – Personal, Portfolio, Business. Each type has their own set of website templates that you can choose. As always, you can choose to view an example to decide on the best template you would like to use.

Once a template is selected, Strikingly leads to you to the edit section. Here you see the actual website in action, that is how it would look on your browser. You can edit every part of the website, like the background, the text boxes, and more. Although you have a great selection you can choose to add in your site, the level of customization is limited. But the number of templates on offer and the good number of features you can add or edit is good enough for most people. You can set up multiple pages to your sites and add features, such as normal text boxes, image boxes, connect options through Facebook, Twitter, etc. Editing your webpage on Strikingly is a breeze.

Strikingly - Edit Page

Best of all, all the site you build is readily optimized for the mobile and tablet devices. Strikingly believed that building websites first with mobile devices in mind and then add features for the desktop versions would make a great website. Sure enough the sites built look great on mobile browsers, the swipe gesture for scrolling a page looks great here. Strikingly provides live previews for desktop, laptop and mobile browsers, which will give you a fair idea of how your site will look in various devices.

Strikingly - Mobile Preview

You can use Strikingly for free to build one site and limited bandwidth. Pro options are available for a monthly/yearly fee, that will give you the ability to add custom domains, larger bandwidth, add your own HTML/CSS/Javascript, free domain and more. There is a 14-day trial pack for the Starter and Pro paid packages. Strikingly also has rewards, where you can earn upto 6 months of Pro account usage by sharing it among your friends and other ways.

Strikingly is a great tool to build your website, especially for those who have no development background or for those who does not have time to build one. Setting one up is an hassle free affair and the result is a beautifully designed sites with mobile browsers in mind. The pricing is fair and you can even earn free months of usage. Head to the link below to set up one on your own.

Sources: Strikingly [via Lifehacker, Techcrunch]

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