Google has long offered Google Sites, which gives businesses and consumers a way to quickly build their own websites with no HTML knowledge required, making it relatively easy for anyone without a technical background to build a simple website. Until now, the platform has not had a mobile component. Today, Google is launching new functionality in Sites that allows users to create a simple mobile landing page for free.
Similar to templates for Google Sites web pages, Sites for Mobile allows users to pick a template that suits the consumer’s needs. For example, Sites offers and e-commerce template for users who want a mobile site to sell products (via Google Checkout). Google also offers customer mobile templates for local businesses, restaurants, lead generation and social.
On these mobile sites, businesses and users can include the ability to integrate their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social accounts. Users can also feature the phone number, directions to their business, coupons, menus and more. Businesses can also get analytics on traffic to their mobile sites.
Google says that mobile sites can be deployed within minutes. Google tells us that one in five search queries in retail are on mobile phone, and most of these queries are for local availability. Allowing local retailers and businesses to quickly deploy a mobile site made sense.
Considering the local element, it would make sense for some sort of integration with Google Places. But Google says that they have not yet determined how the search giant is planning to add these mobile sites to Places.