Service adaptation is fundamental to context-aware service provisioning and to the realization of the Virtual Home Environment concept, which is now an integral part of the 3G service framework. Although the technological means for developing advanced, adaptable services are maturing, managing adaptation is still an ambitious task. In this paper, we tackle the issues of automating and managing adaptable web content for mobile users and illustrate the potential of policy-based service management. We present a novel policy-based framework, its experimental evaluation and discuss considerations on the applicability of state-of-the-art, XML-related technologies for the development of adaptable content and services for mobile users. We finally assess the overheads arising from the adaptation process and explore possible trade-offs.