Oscommerce and Mobile Devices

[Guest]

Hi all

 

are there any addons that will make my oscommerce website more user friendly for mobile device user ie..phones and tablets..

 

just wondering like...

 

regads

 

Liam

[Casper_o]

iOSC Mobile Version for OSC 2.3.3.

[Guest]

Hi Casper

 

Thanks for the link that looks like just what I need..

 

Many Thanks

 

Liam

[rudolfl]

version 2.3.4 is supposed to work on mobile devices.

Any ideas for a release date?

 

Rudolf

[♥raiwa]

version 2.3.4 is supposed to work on mobile devices.

Any ideas for a release date?

 

Rudolf

 

you mean 2.4.?

 

Work on mobile devices, what to say work, does any version. They discuss about to include mobile responsive design, but as far as I know nothing concrete.

 

What I can tell you for sure is that iOSC Mobile version 7.0.0. will be released soon (1-2 months) and will be based on jquery mobile design.

 

 

regards

Rainer

[ozEworks]

In my opinion responsive design does not work for ecommerce. To make it work requires a clever design and coding effort and it is never as good as simply redirecting traffic to a mobile view. In developing a mobile version, you want to avoid as much as possible ending up with two lots of code to support. The above Add On definitely means you have a second front end to support. Not saying it is a bad thing just something that needs to be factored into the total cost of ownership.

[♥bruyndoncx]

In my opinion responsive design does not work for ecommerce. To make it work requires a clever design and coding effort and it is never as good as simply redirecting traffic to a mobile view. In developing a mobile version, you want to avoid as much as possible ending up with two lots of code to support. The above Add On definitely means you have a second front end to support. Not saying it is a bad thing just something that needs to be factored into the total cost of ownership.

From my experience a responsive design does work for ecommerce better called t(ablet)-commerce, but if your business case is m-commerce, then you are probably better of with a mobile specific optimized site which as far as I know means almost double maintenance as you would have a desktop(/tablet) optimized set of pages and a set of webpages optimized for mobile.

@@FlyingKites, can you elaborate why you feel responsive is not suited for ecommerce ?

[ozEworks]

Most websites work on tablets. So the user experience is pretty much the same there.

 

But in terms of UI on a phone, responsive is a hard road. It is not simply a case of designing on a "responsive" grid and shifting elements over the left as the window shrinks. A lot of things can shift but a lot of things have to disappear and others have to disappear in one form and re-appear in another. When you start having to do too much of the latter then it is less "responsive" and more two designs in one. In the end, I believe you are compromise UI in both environments.

 

Also how people interact with a phone is different to a tablet or PC. Plus what they are trying to achieve on a phone is often more "directed" than on a PC or tablet. They have less time to wait, less patience in terms of finding what they want. They just want to get whatever it is done. You don't want to lose the sale because it took so long to move thru the workflow that they got distracted by "life" e.g their lunch order was ready, their train arrived, the doctor can see them now.

 

A good mobile design will beat a responsive design hands down if you ask me.

 

 

[♥mattjt83]

@@bruyndoncx

@@FlyingKites

 

Maintaining the code base for a separate mobile site was the most difficult task when I started messing with the mobile versions of osCommerce available. Also having to go through and recode a lot of poorly done code was a total pain.

 

After converting my site to a responsive design things are much easier to maintain. The initial setup takes longer because there is a lot of testing involved for different screen sizes but in the long run it's worth it. Just because a user is on a smartphone or tablet doesn't mean they should have to visit a separate site or get different content. I think most people expect the same functionality on either mobile or desktop and all of this forces you to be creative and make sure your site runs efficiently. Responsive web design is the future but I think a lot of people would rather use a separate mobile site simply because it's easier to get setup and running and much less testing/tweaking is required (at least in the beginning).

[♥bruyndoncx]

I feel pretty much the same way as @@mattjt83

If I look at my statistics though, I have about 5% visitors from mobile (phone) and just over 20% from tablets.

Tablets convert really well, even better than desktop, but mobile conversion is almost non-existent.

Wonder if some one with a mobile site can make the case for the extra effort in maintaining a separate mobile site.

@@FlyingKites, do you have mobile ecommerce sites in your portfolio ?

[ozEworks]

Yes we do but under our agreement with our customers we cannot post their URLs in forums.

[gagaggogo]

Oh, thanks @@Casper_o

[rdbello]

What is the best solution: https://github.com/phpgenie/mobile-responsive-oscommerce or http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/8629 ?

 

Thanks

[♥bruyndoncx]

they are different solutions

 

responsive will adapt your site so it works better across different devices, from wide desktop to small ebook, to tablet big and small as wel as phones.

But the data pages you download is essentially the same unless you do some very advanced tweaking that is not part of the above phpgenie link

 

iosC Mobile is basically a second catalog folder that is optimized for mobile (small screen) use like phones and possibly small tablets too.

It is kinda double maintenance compared to your regular catalog, but it does give you full control and it standard looks like any other grey/blue phone app.

 

So the real question is, what is your problem, what are you trying to solve ?

 

I would even argue, they are compatible, you can do both if you have plenty of time, or a good use case for both.

[rdbello]

they are different solutions

 

responsive will adapt your site so it works better across different devices, from wide desktop to small ebook, to tablet big and small as wel as phones.

But the data pages you download is essentially the same unless you do some very advanced tweaking that is not part of the above phpgenie link

 

iosC Mobile is basically a second catalog folder that is optimized for mobile (small screen) use like phones and possibly small tablets too.

It is kinda double maintenance compared to your regular catalog, but it does give you full control and it standard looks like any other grey/blue phone app.

 

So the real question is, what is your problem, what are you trying to solve ?

 

I would even argue, they are compatible, you can do both if you have plenty of time, or a good use case for both.

 

Hi Carine

 

How are you?

 

Thanks for your assistance.

 

I prefer a solution that I need to do once. But quality comes first. If I understand well, PHPGenie would be the best option in this case, correct? Have you tested? If yes, have a link that I could check? If not, the quality is preserved and I will have full control over the layout of the content? Will I need to use the sstema adaptation of images too? I thank you again for your attention.

 

Renato

[k-kenney]

If you are deciding between responsive and a separate mobile optimized website it really depends. Shopgate actually released a white paper regarding this comparison a month ago. shopgate.com/us/responsive_design

[♥toyicebear]

As other have mentioned responsive design require some more initial work in testing, but after that its very easy to maintain. The main disadvantage with a responsive design is that a mobile/tablet will have to load in all the css, js and images just like in the desktop version, so basically most responsive sites are fairly slow loading on mobiles. The main advantages of a separate mobile site is that it can be much lighter and faster as-well as usually having a more mobile optimized navigation, layout and flow. This ofcourse only applies to a mobile site made the right way, if not then there is no point in using a separate mobile site as opposed to responsive design.