Why I'm Quitting Zen Cart

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Originally Posted by sunflowertami

On v1.6 I was wondering if the default template would somehow already be responsive? This is not something that will go away.

Drupal v. 8 is building in responsive views on their tables.

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FWIW, there are still differing schools of thought for application of a forward face (template) for mobile/smaller devices/tablets. Ie. Template that rearranges content as the display size changes vs. a different application/style providing the view. As a result, I would think that it may be "difficult" to claim just one style of presentation as the opener for the base template... That said, providing a means that is relatively device independent may be considered ideal not requiring core/baseline changes for new devices...

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Originally Posted by sunflowertami

On v1.6 I was wondering if the default template would somehow already be responsive?

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Yes, that's the plan.

Just read this on the way to another thread...

For what it is worth I have compared loads of different platforms over the years and this one is the only one that can do what I need to do. The modules that are available on here are amazing. The support stupendous. Since 2007 this has been the only platform capable of taking on what I needed to do, which I did not think was that complicated. As with having responsive design included as a basic I would also say that including elements like CEON SEO URL for example would put this platform years ahead of others.

Over and out.

Dr. Byte, you are the best!! I'm excited about zencart all over again!

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Originally Posted by DrByte

Yes, that's the plan.

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Originally Posted by paperman

... I would also say that including elements like CEON SEO URL for example would put this platform years ahead of others.

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I've never quite got why so many consider things like CEON SEO URL to be so important. My shop ranks well without it. I'm not doing AdWords, just organic SEO. Search engines don't seem to care that much about the URL. Yes, they are more user friendly, but few users ever type in the URL anyway, and most of the friendly URLs are still too complicated for the users to remember. They're still too long to use on social media, so shorteners like Bitly need to be used there.

But maybe I'm just missing something!

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I've never quite got why so many consider things like CEON SEO URL to be so important

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You are right (IMHO). Friendly URLs are not "important" at all.

But...I use them, I do a lot of pasting of urls into emails and
- they look so much better
- I think they do reinforce the name of the product, if only for those self same people who seem to find it so hard to
read/navigate the shop and have to be sent an email!
- using a native url (in an email for example) maybe gives an worse impression of the shop in terms of how "advanced" it is and hence the state of the company behind it.
- I think new users expect this function to be there out of the box because everyone else has it. Not a reason to include it, but in the end, the idea here (at ZC HQ) is to get as many people as possible to use Zen Cart is it not?
And so if potential users discount it because this function is "missing" (in their view) is that not something to bear in mind?

So I think it has become a norm whether we like or not, no doubt some "expert" can put a figure on whether a friendly-url-based shop fares better in customer perception/their willingness to spend than a native-url one...hopefully not in this thread which started off with interesting meat but is now well off topic.

I've always thought it might be useful to have a way to integrate a URL shortener like Bitly into Zen Cart. Some easy way to get the canonical link for the page as a short URL. Then it would be easy to use short URLs in emails and social media posts. Plus you could get the analytics information from Bitly and maybe gain some extra insights. I haven't seen a plugin for this as yet.

I built my first ZC site nearly 13 years ago (early-ish 2003 when ZC forked out of OsC).

I've tried many competitive systems over the years and while ALL have pro's and con's, I have found ZC to be the system with the fewest con's.

I have always regarded FUNCTIONALTY being far more important than COSMETICS, and despite what some people say, ZC is one of the easiest systems to tweak from a cosmetics point of view.

Today, visual simplicity is the most critical consideration as a rapidly-increasing number of people move to mobile browsing (and shopping) - and the nice thing about ZC is its very, very easy to GET RID of stuff that can clutter up the site.

Having built over 300 sites in ZC over the years (mostly for other people), 4 years ago we moved out of web consulting to our own retail environment and built some sites for ourselves (all selling much the same stuff) and it's really interesting to see (over the years) that the sites with the simplest user interfaces are the ones that are generating the most business.

Today, people want to get to the product(s) they are seeking quickly and easily, add to cart, then checkout as fast as possible. So this is our core focus... how do we really streamline the user experience to meet modern online shoppers' expectations?

This weekend, we had 416 orders across all 5 sites, with about 72% occurring on our one responsive site - pettags.uk.com which is so "bland" to the eye, you would wonder what makes it so attractive... Well, I'll tell you... rapid and easy navigation to PRODUCT, and simple, FAST checkout. Nothing else matters. We build our sites to suit the way CUSTOMERS like to use them... not on our own ideas of what may "look nice".

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Originally Posted by schoolboy

We build our sites to suit the way CUSTOMERS like to use them... not on our own ideas of what may "look nice".

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Worth adding, that this design philosophy is usually highly rewarded in the Google SE rankings too.

It's all about the 'customer experience' these days.

Cheers
RodG

Shopify as an option to ZC?

SEO is a problem with Shopify - offsite/3rd party links are benefiting Shopify, e.g. yourshop.shopify.com, your shop is effectively a sub-domain