Mojaba aims to make building mobile sites easy for creative professionals

Torsion Mobile, a Des Moines-based startup building mobile solutions for creative professionals, released its first product, Mojaba, in early February with the mission to make mobile websites easier to build. Mojaba, pronounced “mo-jah-ba,” was developed for the nearly 80 percent of websites not currently formatted for mobile devices, Torsion co-founders Christian Gurney (far left) and…

Torsion Mobile, a Des Moines-based startup building mobile solutions for creative professionals, released its first product, Mojaba, in early February with the mission to make mobile websites easier to build.

Mojaba, pronounced “mo-jah-ba,” was developed for the nearly 80 percent of websites not currently formatted for mobile devices, Torsion co-founders Christian Gurney (far left) and Richard Kirsner (near left) said in an interview on Tuesday. Using HTML5, Mojaba allows its users – the company is targeting agencies, creative professionals and freelancers – to create websites optimized for mobile devices, presenting information relative to visitors on the go, such as hours of operation and location. It also provides features tailored for mobile, like click-to-call, click-to-email and direction mapping, which takes into effect the location of the site visitor.

“Mojaba is just the first step in providing more tools for mobile marketing for agencies,” Gurney said. “Businesses and organizations will have to have a mobile presence that people can use, or they will just simply miss out on communication from professional clients or customers.”

The benefit for Mojaba’s users, Gurney and Kirsner said, is that all the heavy work has been taken out of creating mobile sites, allowing for easy-to-use, fully branded mobile sites to be created in less time with no coding or design experience required. Available with each mobile site are enhanced analytics that show exact GPS coordinates of users, which allows for agencies to track and record location data to reveal traffic patterns and location-based opportunities for clients.

BECOME A SPONSOR

Mojaba allows creative professionals to create mobile websites for users to take action in a simple and mobile-optimized format.

To use the product, agencies pay an annual subscription fee to Torsion Mobile with the option of automatic renewal. The costs for clients is then up to the agency to decide based on perceived value and similar services.

Mojaba enters a mobile marketing space with competitors like Onbile, Mofuse and even Google’s Sites product, but its approach differs as it aims to establish long-term value and relationships with marketing agencies directly.

The project, previously referred to as “Project M,” began in December 2010 and received $50,000 from the Iowa Department of Economic Development (IDED) in July as part of the Demonstration Fund. Gurney and Kirsner founded Torsion Mobile in 2011, putting about $100,000 of their own money into the company, a Des Moines Business Record story reported in March.

Mojaba has been built to work on all mobile platforms with web browsing capabilities, including Apple iOS, Google Android, BlackBerry 5+, Windows Phone 7+ and select feature phones.

Here’s a video from Torsion Mobile providing an overview of Mojaba:

 

Image and video credits: Photo of Christian Gurney and Richard Kirsner as well as Mojaba screenshots courtesy of Torsion Mobile. Video from Mojaba on Vimeo.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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