Mobile apps and mobile versions of your small business’s website are a must, as Exabyzness readers are well aware, but they are not always an option for many firms as either costs are deemed too large to warrant investment and the process seems too complicated to tackle in house. Indeed, although mobile programming languages and mobile-centric website design are popular among current computer science college students, there are still very few people with sufficient skills in this arena. That limited supply is what drives up costs and paying an employee to learn how to do it himself on the side can be equally expensive. Consumers love these features though, and these minor conveniences can often be what keep a potential client on your site longer versus frustratingly going elsewhere. This is especially true given the current rise in the use of mobile devices for accessing the internet as covered on this site recently. What are small businesses to do?

Luckily there is a new concept that will hopefully turn into a trend. Consider the restaurant based cohort of small businesses. There is a popular website call Open Table which can allow consumers to book reservations at any of its listed restaurants. This adds ease for small business owners looking to provide a convenience for their customers. Open Table can only offer the service if a restaurant agrees though. Therefore, to entice more businesses to join the listing, Open Table is offering to free mobile websites for participating restaurants. If this trend catches on in other industries it could really revolutionize small business website infrastructure and further promote mobile’s place in internet access. Mashable continues, “The popular online reservation platform launched a free service on Tuesday in partnership with DudaMobile, a DIY mobile website builder, to help restaurants foot the cost of creating websites tailored for smartphones and tablets. The offer is geared towards small and medium-sized establishments who may not have the resources or the know-how to build their own mobile websites. “We want to eliminate the friction of making this move for our restaurant customers so they can provide better hospitality for their diners,” Matthew Roberts, CEO of OpenTable, told Mashable. At the moment, Roberts says that customers visiting the websites of many of these restaurants from their mobile devices end up seeing a blank page because there is flash, or else a full desktop page because it hasn’t been formatted for mobile. Either way, it can be a turn off for consumers interested in doing business with the restaurant…”