On my previous post, I had discussed about some tips on building a mobile business website. Inspired by a comment from Martin Lindeskog, I have decided to share with you, my dear readers, some tips on how to test whether your mobile viewers are getting optimum viewing capacity on their mobile browsers.

That said, I have scoured the net for a cornucopia of sites which can be useful to test mobile compatibility of your site.

Here are some mobile browser compatibility-testing sites:

1.   mobiReady – This site is fairly easy to navigate and the best part is, it’s free. If you are interested in just checking a page of your site, just enter the url of the page you want to check and click on go. It will then show an overall result of how your page would display on a mobile phone as well as give you an estimated speed.

There’s also a part where you could see how the page would appear on your viewers’ mobile phone. However, this feature is limited as there are just a few mobile devices which are available for you to choose from. Some of those devices are Nokia N70, Samsung z105, Sony Ericsson k750i, Motorola v3i and Sharp GX-10.

2.   Gomez’ Mobile Performance Test – You would just need to register by entering some of your details such as your name, title, valid email address, as well as the url of the site you would like to test and you would receive an email from gomez.com of the results of the test. It’s also free and the devices you can check compatibility with are the most popular on the market such as Nexus One Android running Chrome NX1 2.2, Apple iPhone running Safari 4.0, Apple iPad running Safari 3.2, and BlackBerry Storm2 running BlackBerry OS5 browser.

3.   W3C mobileOK Checker – This is a free tool you could use as well. Just type in the url of the site you want to test, click on “check” and you would get a full report on how mobile-friendly your site is. Apart from the detailed report  and description on page size and network usage, what’s particularly interesting is that it would also show you what failures it has encountered.

4.   Google Mobilizer – This again, is free and it’s simple to use. Basically, you would just need to enter the url of the website you’d like to check and it trims down the content to how it would look on a mobile browser. Unlike the other tests I have mentioned, this site would not give you details on how to optimize your site for mobile compatibility. Instead, it would show you a preview of how your site would look like on your mobile.

5.   DotMobi Emulator – Like the Google Mobilizer, this tool is a live preview of how your site would look on a mobile browser. You just need to enter the url of your site, hit submit, choose the skin, click on update and voila, you would be able to see how your site would look like on a mobile device. A downside to this though is that there are only two skins to choose from: Sony K750 and Nokia N70.

You can also use automated software testing to test any technical aspects of your mobile site. In the time and age we are currently living in, the challenge for small business owners has always been to be at par with large companies. It does not matter that your business is small, what matters is that we small business owners have to think big to be big. Mobile-friendly websites are all the rage and we have to keep up with the technology to get our customers what they want and need in a most convenient manner.