The key takeaway: In just a matter of minutes, businesses can create a mobile website, giving them a whole new way of marketing themselves and increasing business. (Really, Google timed the demo. It took less than 10 minutes.)

A few reminders for anyone creating a mobile site:

• Evaluate your customer and think about what they need from your mobile site. We suggest looking at the analytics for your regular site and featuring the most popular pages.
• Include features such as click-to-call and mobile maps to make it easy for people to find you when they’re on-the-go.
• Remember to copy-and-paste the redirect code into your regular website. This will ensure that mobile visitors will see your mobile site instead of your regular site.

Watch the video of the Hangout below to see the product demo. You’ll see for yourself that building your own mobile site is a no brainer — especially since Google will be picking up the tab for the first year!

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For example, add a dropdown menu with time-slots to take reservations or appointment requests.  Add custom text fields to collect customer info for free estimates, or just use your contact form as a survey to learn more about your users.

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#7 Reason to Go Mobile: 51% of business travelers use mobile devices to get travel information. (Google/OTX, The Traveler’s Road to Decision, 2011)

#6 Reason to Go Mobile: 70% of all smartphone owners use their mobile device while they’re shopping. (Google/OTX, The Mobile Movement, U.S., 2011)

#5 Reason to Go Mobile: By 2015, more Americans will access the Internet on their mobile device than on their PC. (IDC, 2011)

#4 Reason to Go Mobile: Users expect their mobile experience to be as good as their desktop experience. (Compuware, What Users Want from Mobile, 2011)

#3 Reason to Go Mobile: Users take action on mobile-friendly sites. 1 in 5 website visits lead to an immediate call to the business. (DudaMobile Internal Data, 2011)

#2 Reason to Go Mobile:  There are 7 billion people in the world. About 2 billion people are connected to the Internet. And 1 billion have smartphones where they can (and will) access the mobile web. (Eric Schmidt MWC Feb. 2012)

#1 Reason to Go Mobile: You risk losing business if you don’t have a mobile site. Nearly 2 in 3 users are unlikely to return to a mobile site where they had trouble and 40% said they’d visit a competitor’s mobile site instead. (Compuware, 2010)

Flash is out. Big time. Google can not index or read it. Apple’s iPod, iPhones and iPad devices do not support it. And its maker, Adobe, stopped developing new versions of it for mobile devices. With the rapid growth of mobile and a need for a friendlier mobile experience, HTML5 stepped in to take its place. But let’s not forget what Flash allowed the web to do.

For the longest time, most interactive websites were built with Flash. Those animations where you could throw pies at the president, the games that you played on Yahoo! with random strangers, that YouTube video you watched yesterday… all of these use Flash.

We all want the web to still be able to do all of these things and more. For this, Flash has spoiled us. Let’s respectfully let Flash R.I.P. and give thanks for all that it did to pave the way for HTML5 and the web-based applications that use it.

HTML5 has many benefits over the old Flash environment. It’s built into all browsers by default, meaning there is no need to install plugins to make it work. It has native video and audio capabilities, removing the need to use Flash-based containers to play. It allows more data to be stored locally, allowing developers to take advantage of the resources on the local device. With a combination of the canvas HTML5 element and dynamic JavaScript, developers can create interactive environments, Google often uses HTML5 in very creative ways on the Google homepage, like the recent Gideon Sundbacks 132nd Birthday Doodle.

All of the newest HTML5 features allow developers to write these web-apps for any device that has a browser and these days, everything has a browser built into it. Now what we need is push developers to create interactive web-apps instead of creating phone based applications, which only run on one kind of device.

Of the 500 exhibitors split between the North and South Halls of the great McCormick Center, our team was on a mission to educate restaurant owners about why they should have a presence on the mobile web, as well as cook up fresh mobile sites for them on the spot.

Why Restaurants?

Google internal data tells us that 30% of all U.S. restaurant searches are done on mobile.  On Valentines Day, Google reported that this number more than doubled to 64%. The sad reality TechCrunch recently brought to our attention is that 95% of independent restaurants don’t have mobile sites. This breaks my heart.

The Duda Team sees that this is a problem and has an easy and affordable solution. We went to the show to educate restaurant owners on why their frilly Flash desktop sites and downloadable PDF menus had to go. I can’t tell you how sick I am of having to download a PDF menu to my phone then pinch and zoom my way through its contents to see what they’re serving.

With the promise of happy customers, we bedazzled conference attendees with our efficient click-to-call, mobile maps and OpenTable widgets.  We also preached mobile website design best practices by showing off features like the image slider and inline image cropping.

The show was a success! Here are a couple of our favorite mobile sites we “cooked up” at our booth:

But the best part of the show had to be all the fantastic food we got to sample. Take a look at these food wonders we saw while at the show. Beware, your mind will be blown!

Learn more about the National Restaurant Association and the NRA Show on Restaurant.org.

Now, customers can make reservations directly from your mobile site, too.

DudaMobile just integrated an OpenTable widget that restaurants can drop into their mobile site, offering another great way to get eaters into your seats. It’s also super easy to set up: Just have your OpenTable restaurant ID handy. Check out this video for details.

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During the Hangout, the Google team will help Top Mast Resort in Massachusetts and Sava’s Restaurant in Michigan create their own mobile website using the free GoMo site builder, powered by Duda. Our very own CMO, Dennis Mink, will also be on the webinar to talk about mobile best practices and what to consider when building your own mobile site.

Details on how to join: 
1. Sign into Google+ on Thursday, May 10 at 1 p.m. EST/10 a.m. PST
2. Go to the Think with Google Google+ page
3. Look for the stream post and click to enter the live stream

Be sure to set a reminder in your calendar! If you have questions before or during the Hangout, post them with the hashtag #GoMoSite as a comment on the Google+ page.

We like it because: They kept their mobile site simple, reducing some of the copy to bullet form and only including a few photos for faster loading.

Mobile-friendly features they use are: Click-to-call and click-to-email across every page, so customers can easily get in touch with them while on their smartphones. They also used Duda’s mobile map widget should a customer need to find their store.

Their mobile site can be found at: m.whitegoodssolutions.com.au.

Like all widgets on DudaMobile, these features can be added by just dragging them into your mobile site within our site builder tool.

OpenTable: This widget allows restaurants to sync their existing OpenTable account with their mobile website, so patrons can make a reservation directly from their phones. You just need your OpenTable restaurant ID to add this feature.

Photo Gallery: This gives site owners another way to display their photos. Unlike the Image Slider, which displays photos in a slideshow format, the Photo Gallery shows thumbnail images that enlarge to full mobile screen when clicked.

Contact Form: This allows business owners to drop-in a simple email form, so their mobile site visitors can send them a message directly from the mobile website.

1. Non-optimized pages

If links on your mobile website lead your visitor to a non-mobilized page, you should be embarrassed. (Or at least apologetic.) Check all links to make sure they take your user to a page that’s just as mobile-friendly as your site.

2. Auto-play multimedia

Videos and music that start playing once a user lands on your website are annoying. Multimedia that starts playing once a user lands on your mobile website is even worse. Apple has taken note of this dated feature and kindly disabled all auto-play multimedia from causing a commotion for iPhone users. Unfortunately, not everyone owns an iPhone!

3. Flash

I’m starting to feel like a broken record when talking about Flash. If you haven’t gotten the memo that Flash is incompatible on mobile websites, then listen up. Your Flash’s smooth moves do not appear on your mobile site. Period. For the sake of your mobile visitors, please PLEASE remove Flash from your mobile site.

4. Long columns of photos

Take a look at your mobile site. Do you need to scroll down long columns of photos to get to the bottom of a page? If your answer is yes, it’s time to reconsider the image display method on your site (or lack thereof). You have two options, either reduce your photos down to one or two per page or compile all pictures in a slideshow. (Check out the new DudaMobile image slider!)

5. Password protected pages

Pages that require a user to login to proceed don’t work well on a mobile device. Mobile site visitors also lack the patience to take the time to enter their login information. Do yourself a favor and completely remove these sections from your mobile site.

Disagree with me on any one of these five things? I dare you to show me a mobile website that contains one of these items that’s in perfect working condition or that’s aesthetically pleasing. In the meantime, do your mobile site visitors a favor and take these pesky elements off your site.