Whats the most mobile friendly template?

[cgl102770]

It doesnt necessarily have to be compatible with every mobile phone made in the last 5 years or so, just a template thats simple and has big text, maybe only 1 or 2 columns as opposed to Zen Carts standard 3 column layout. Thank you for any suggestions! Also, I'm using the latest version of Zen Cart, I just installed this week.

[dgent]

Try the dress site in my sig. I get a good 50/50 split of computer/mobile traffic and good conversion rate to sales direct from mobile users.

Uses a modified Pure Green series template.

[ultimate_zc]

Mobile templates are designed to respond to multiple devices displaying a native-app like design. jQuery Mobile for the most part, overrides all css of regular desktop designs. There a several (Not many) jQuery Mobile themes/templates for Zen Cart, and a few other mobile designs most sold by Algozone.

Listed below are the jQuery Mobile Designs I am familiar with:
Mobile Template for Zen Cart Stores by Delia
The MyStorePal MCommerce Template by MyStorePal
JSWeb Zen Cart mCommerce v2.0 by JSWeb
Mobile Zen Cart (jQuery Mobile) v1.0.0 my design, look at my signature.

[Toraman]

Nice Desktop and Mobile Zen Cart stores two in one. Could Dreamweaver mobile gap jQuery provide zen cart mobile store solution? I am interested on it. Thanks.

[ultimate_zc]

I would suggest jQuery Mobile instead of Phone Gap. Adobe dropped its support for Phone Gap in Dreamweaver CS6.

[ultimate_zc]

Well, I take that back. I emailed one of my professors (I'm studying mobile development) regarding jQuery Mobile. I was wondering if all the bells and whistles I'm adding to my projects (which I was later planning on adding to my Zen Cart designs) were a waste of time or not.

I suggest you experiment first with either jQuery Mobile or Bootstrap rather than PhoneGap.

We went through a lot of JavaScript instruction obviously to learn the concepts but then it was more convenient to rewrite everything for jQuery and jQuery Mobile. I certainly do not feel like rewriting all the work I have done once again when we go into more detailed iOS language like Objective-C. So, next month, I will be introduced to Objective-C and I'm told that I will not be writing anything with Javascript, HTML, jQuery or jQuery Mobile.

With that being said, to better answer your question. If you want to create mobile templates for Zen Cart, I seriously recommend jQuery Mobile, it is easy to learn and the design can be displayed across several mobile platforms. In that manner, the template since it is a webpage will be able to open in an iPhone, Android, Blackberry or whatever device the visitor is using.

PhoneGap, which is what I'll be working with next month, is in my opinion more of a device specific tool. Meaning, if you create a Zen Cart app for iPhone, you will also have to create another one for Android and so on...

You have to consider the updates as well. Let's say that you find a bug in your jQuery Mobile design. You fix it, upload it to the server and finish. An app, you have to fix it, submit it for approval, notify the users of an update and hope that they actually update your app.

If you want to build a headache free Zen Cart website for mobile, use jQM. You can also experiment with Twitter's Bootstrap and create some Responsive Web Designs. I have been experimenting with these as well and they are much easier to work with and there is even a much important benefit to it: "You only need one design". I understand also that the Zen Cart team will be creating a Responsive template for the upcoming version 1.6. Below you can see how a responsive design adjusts itself to the screen size. I know the template is not really much to look at however, the point is to make the template flexible. With few additional tweaks, it should look very professional.

[ushanka]

Thanks a lo, it was very informative answer.
I am thinking to move to mobile template and was looking for the best way.

[delia]

Actually phone gap allows conversion to various OS according to the presentation I went to a few weeks ago. But it does make applications, not mobile sites. I went to a un-conference yesterday where responsive design was one of the topics. Using bootstrap or other css preprocessors seems to me to be overkill for only doing one site. We all agreed that an app-like mobile site that speeds up buying is the best way to go - keeping a certain look should be the last concern for ecommerce. You want customers to have an easy way to buy. In my opinion, a mobile experience that does not facilitate that is not worth the time or effort.

[schoolboy]

Research (Forrester) is showing that shoppers are using mobiles to MOSTLY do price comparisons when visiting a bricks 'n mortar store.

EG: Joe Smith goes to the Mall and visits a large electronics retailer. While he's there, he finds stuff he's interested in, (let's say a new laptop or TV set) and he "test-drives" it in-situ...

Then, he gets out his android and looks for the same item at online retailers. He's keen to check if online prices are better than the store he's in. If so, he will go home and probably do the transaction from a "conventional" computer.

In this way, large physical retail outlets are becoming little more than "physical showrooms" for every other retailer - places where people can "kick the tyres" before they make the final purchase.

The rate of growth in this "trend" suggest that within the next 12 to 18 months, 40% of people visiting large physical retailers are there only to see and touch the "real" goods, before they go online to buy it elsewhere.

Currently, only a small handful of "mobile shoppers" actually conclude a transaction on their devices... Most go back home and finish the purchase on a conventional computer.

This is likely to change, however - just like everything changes!

This would suggest that your site (when viewed on a mobile) should be able to quickly show:-

1. Product models (and UPC codes)
2. Prices

... this will enable the mobile shopper to do the kind of comparisons he is currently using his device for.

[rstevenson]

I've done exactly what schoolboy describes above. In fact I did it again today (but not with a smart phone.) Whether or not any consumer does this sort of thing using your site depends entirely on what kinds of products you sell. If your on-line products are unique, then 100% of shoppers will never do this sort of comparison shopping.

In my retail site, we sell the cards we publish, and we sell them wholesale from our wholesale site. Both sites are standard XHTML-style Zen Cart sites. Neither has any kind of customization to enhance the mobile experience. I'm not a mobile user (I have an iPad but not an iPhone, nor any other kind of smart phone) so I wasn't sure how much effort I should put into the whole mobile issue. I had asked a couple of friends to let me view my sites on their phones, and the sites seemed fine to me. One day I asked a young friend to view our retail site while I sat and watched. She'd never seen it before and had only the vaguest idea what we sold. First comment: "Oh! It's beautiful!" Second and subsequent comments were similar, as she looked through the cards in both the product list views and the product detail screens, zooming in or out and sliding side to side as needed, entirely without complaint or impatience. Then she exclaimed she was going to buy some of them -- as soon as she got home to her grown-up computer. Note that she didn't say or do anything to suggest she couldn't buy it on her iPhone; she just said she'd do it at home. And she did.

I've always had the impression that smart phones were more of an information retrieval device than an action device, except perhaps for such things as buying movie tickets. Watching her confirmed that impression -- for my sites, at least.

Rob