To Work out of the box

[Buzby]

Can we have it so that Sellerdeck does truly work out of the box without having to stretch the software just to do as it should.

For example for many versions it has been difficult to list a product by brand, and item which meant duplicate products, also causing duplication content for SEO.

Sellerdeck has gone some way to solving this with its powerful filtering options taking us a step closer. but still is not truly working out of the box.

My Example.

I have my products sorted under Brand and am happy with the layout. I then decide to show the products in other sections under an item listing such as Wedding Rings

The filtering page now shows search results in a different layout obviously making the page look as a search result page, and not a product page.

If out of the box the search results page for Wedding Rings should replicate the exact same layout as the Brand page where the main product is located.

The problem that I am having with my filtering results is that the image is referencing my smaller thumbnail whilst my main product listing references my main imagine. Now I know that I can insert the main image in to the thumbnail box, but now I have the same image referenced twice, and now my marketing lists are using a larger sized image bulking the pages out.

Could we please get this working as standard without having to do workarounds, script changes etc?

Image enclosed to show the difference of products, and filtered results.

[brucet]

At present not all of the product fields can be displayed in the search and filter results. We are working towards reducing this limitation, and hopefully eventually removing it. But unfortunately it's not a small task, and it will take a while to achieve because there are many other things that have a similar priority.

In the meantime, if you set 'Match Product Layout To Filtered Results' to 'True' (the default setting) in the Filtering tab of the Product Details, SellerDeck will do its best to match the two displays.

Your attachment seems to show a page that has 'Match Product Layout To Filtered Results' set to 'False'. If you have it set to True and it's not working, I suggest following that up with technical support.

Sorry, I know this is not the perfect answer, but I hope it helps

[brucet]

In essence, setting 'Match Product Layout To Filtered Results' to 'True' causes the Section page in static view to use the filtered product layout, and to follow the settings in Settings | Search and Filtering Settings | Results.

Since it's not possible ATM to make the filtered results match the product layouts, we provide the option to do the reverse, so that a page can be made to move seamlessly from static to filtered view.

This does rely on the appropriate Conditions (particularly '<actinic:variable name="MatchLayouts" /> == True' and '<actinic:variable name="MatchLayouts" /> == False') being in the right places in the Product Layout. I have just double-checked this and it works fine with all the standard SellerDeck 2013 layouts, and with unmodified upgraded layouts (I have tested this personally from v11, should be fine back to v9 at least). But custom layouts might not have the Conditions, and the upgrader may be unable to insert them into standard layouts that have been modified.

The tabular layout is required for showing filtered results in more than one column.

I hope this helps.

[Buzby]

Hi Bruce,

Just to let you know that my layouts were set to true and the image was the result.

Would really be nice to have it just working exactly the same.

Norman, a future add on perhaps?

[Buzby]

Hi Bruce,

I can understand the increased workload that this would be now to get the software back on track, what I really don't understand is how it comes about in the first place.

I am sure that there must be many a development meeting where someone has said that search results and filtered results are going to have a setting to make them look the same as products, only wait a minute, they won't look the same as we won't allow the use of all variables, and will use a different image. Would it not have been easier to program properly from the start?

Don't get me wrong I think the software is great, and would recommend it, I just think sometimes that what the user wants to achieve is not always the goal of the development team.

Another example was the work arounds that we had to do for years to just get a single product page layout which I am happy to say now works a treat in V2013.

[brucet]

Hi Jason

I really think you should contact support about that. If you have 'Match Product Layout To Filtered Results' set to 'True' then the images should definitely be the same. That part is not working as it's designed to, and it should be resolvable.

I understand your frustration and we absolutely do our best to focus on the things that our customers are asking for. However we have a few thousand customers who don't all want the same things, and our wish list items run to four figures, so prioritisation is always a challenge.

Nevertheless it's our challenge and not yours, and I'm sorry that in this respect we have not met your expectations.

[Buzby]

Hi Bruce,

Looking in to this further the software does use different images, here are my findings.

Main product references main image, always.

Filtered products reference thumbnail, if in place and main image if not.

So even if you set "Match Product Layout... to True it will still reference the thumbnail image instead of the main image. However if you do not have a thumbnail image, then it will reference the main image.

When using the match product layout then this should also reference the main image, always, regardless if you have a thumbnail or not.

So work around is do not use thumbnail image. This now bloats pages with larger than needed images just to be shown as small marketing pictures, and you use the ability of adding a 3rd image to a product.

In addition

I can see why you haven't allowed the use of some variables to be used on filtered results as it is dynamic and would take time to process and load the page.

However pages that are displayed based upon a filter only do not need to be dynamic and can be generated as a static page on upload, thus allowing the missing variables to be included so that the filtered product can truly render like the original.

Maybe even a tick box for Dynamic or Static on the section would allow for the user to choose.

This is why I believe that Sellerdeck is not working out of the box as we are still unable to list both by Brand and Product seamlessly

[brucet]

Hi Jason

I've looked into this in detail and you are correct. Filtered results use the Product Thumbnail Image if available, resized if so defined in 'Search And Filtering Settings | Results'. Static layout always uses Product Image at a fixed size.

At the moment it's not possible to change how the filter image is generated, but you can modify the static layout to follow the same behaviour:

Open the 'Filtered Product Summary' layout and find the following line:

<img src="<actinic:variable name="ProductImageFileName" />"

Replace it with:

<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22ProductThumbnailImageFileName%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20%22%22" >
<img src="<actinic:variable name="ProductImageFileName" />"
</actinic:block>
<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22ProductThumbnailImageFileName%22%20%2f%3e%20%21%3d%20%22%22" >
<img src="<actinic:variable name="ProductThumbnailImageFileName" />"
</actinic:block>

Then find the following:

width="80"

and replace it with:

<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22SearchUseProductThumbnail%22%20%2f%3e%20%20%3d%3d%20%221%22">
width="<actinic:variable name="SearchProductThumbWidth" />"
</actinic:block>

I hope this helps.

Filtering uses an adaptation of the search script, which is written Perl and cannot run on your desktop. To generate a static page based on a filter we would have to rewrite the search in C++. This would have taken much longer and been more risky than adapting the search script, because the page generation is more complex. It would have been less flexible, and it would also have increased site upload times, which we have worked very hard over the last few years to reduce.

[Buzby]

Hi Bruce,

Many thanks for that but unfortunately the soloution is going in the wrong direction for me, I need filtered to look like products not the other way around.

I will work around it by removing all thumbnails and hope it is addressed soon.

Many thanks

Jason

[Buzby]

Hi Bruce,

Just wondering if this has/is being addressed as "Match Product Layout To Filtered Results" is not working as designed if it is not using the correct image.

Also has this been accepted as a bug?

[brucet]

A bug was raised for this. Unfortunately I can't give a commitment as to how and when we will resolve it.