Responsive Design

[kernock]

Could anyone tell me, will the new responsive design layout be offered to cover subscribers or is this to remain a paid for service?

A free copy of the beta was given out at the user conference and I was under the impression the new responsive design would be made available for free to cover subscribers?

Thanks

[peblaco]

With version 2013 the responsive design theme is a paid service. If you have queries it may be quicker to call sales directly.

[Jan]

Will it always be a paid for service or will it be included in the next version of Sellerdeck? (just being nosy because Random River have written a responsive design for me already - will be on my paper sites in 2014).

Regards,

[peblaco]

I wondered that too. Many other systems are already offering integrated mobile ready and responsive design as part of the default package cost, such as Actinic. I would expect that at some point this would become an included feature.

[Steve G Griggs]

Responsive design.

I would have expected that any e-commerce software system interested in maintaining their customer base and attracting new subscribers would be seriously looking at making responsive/mobile design templates a major feature in their systems, and not a paid extra given the way tablet and mobile usage is increasing now.
Our own GA stats show a big jump in iPad/Android tablet visitors, and a lesser but still large increase in iPhone/Samsung Galaxy visitors over the last 12-18 months.
I know responsive design is not easy to support across all the major browsers and mobile/tables OS's, but it's something we really can't shy away from anymore. We get the mobile visitors but we need to convert them to sales too.

[Mike Hughes]

Our own GA stats show a big jump in iPad/Android tablet visitors, and a lesser but still large increase in iPhone/Samsung Galaxy visitors over the last 12-18 months.

Which sort of begs the question of how important a responsive design really is. With the Moto G selling at £120 on PAYG with a 720p HD display it's not going to be long before the minimum browser window on a smartphone / tablet is 720px anyway.

I suspect the need to display a website properly on a small browser is going to die away before it even becomes well established.

Mike

[EdHarrison]

I had a call from them and an estimate somewhere around £1500 was mentioned - not too happy if it ends up being part of a later release as standard! Yes I am a cover customer and my site is only catalog and pretty standard.

[I-CC]

I would imagine that an out of the box theme with responsive design abilities may well become a part of the standard set of included themes within future versions of SellerDeck (I would guess), but when it comes to sites using customized themes (even slighly customized themes), this is where it most probably will not work out of the box and a far amount of work will be required to make it responsive or for adopting a mobile only theme.

[Steve G Griggs]

A customised theme would always need to be heavily re-customised. If you were in this situation the best options would be to work with a new responisve layout, or to re-work your customised layout from scratch.
The need for responsive design layouts is not something that's going to go away really unless you just ignore the potential shoppers who are using older devices with smaller screen resolutions. You also have the vast differences between the huge desktop monitors and the screen size of an iPhone.
Responsive design should not only be about layouts adapting to screen size, but the page download time over mobile connections, even 3G/4G connections can be slow and flaky if there are loads of others making calls and using data on the network in your cell's coverage area.
It's about optimising data as well, only downloading scripts that are needed, minimising http requests, efficient loading of CSS, and fast rendering of the page in the browser.
Another point is filling in long checkout forms on a smaller screen, and the difference in behaviour between touch screen and mouse. All these need to be optimised to give your potential buyers a comfortable experience.

[jont]

A customised theme would always need to be heavily re-customised. If you were in this situation the best options would be to work with a new responsive layout, or to re-work your customised layout from scratch.

The SellerDeck responsive theme appears to be built backwards from Desktop down which is not the ideal way of developing for responsive but from the mobile version upwards. I have found it better to build from the ground up rather than try and retro fit an existing site. Retro fitting can be like juggling custard at times.

The need for responsive design layouts is not something that's going to go away

Indeed. Responsive is here right now. Every report you read shows mobile devices outselling desktops and with mobile connections getting better all the time the majority of users will be using phones and tablets. With tablets available at £100.00 and doing just about everything a desktop can (for most users) then desktops will be the reserve of companies and designers and not casual browsers.

It's about optimising data as well

With faster broadband speeds a lot of sites got lazy with bloated pages as it didn't really matter when you have a 100mB connections. Mobile is a whole different ball game as you say. HTML5 also offer a raft of benefits for mobile browsing and should also be taken into consideration when building a new SellerDeck site.

[jont]

I suspect the need to display a website properly on a small browser is going to die away before it even becomes well established.

Don't let Google Glass and Samsung Gear hear you say that!

[jont]

I wondered that too. Many other systems are already offering integrated mobile ready and responsive design as part of the default package cost, such as Actinic. I would expect that at some point this would become an included feature.

I was truly amazed it was not rolled out for free

[Mike Hughes]

I have to admit I was surprised it was extra, and so much so. More expensive than a Business or even Business Plus licence.

I tend to agree with Steve that websites should be responsive as standard. I still think that pixel resolution is not the key parameter as small pixel count displays are going to disappear rapidly. Even google glass and samsung gear will ramp up the pixel count very quickly.

It's far more important to make sites display as best possible on small scale screens. I don't know how this would work but it's wrong to assume there'll be a good correlation between screen size and pixel count. Does the sellerdeck 'responsive' design do this or does it just adjust to the window pixel count?

Mike

[jont]

A good read for the concerns of responsive design is http://www.w3.org/2013/Talks/responsive-design.pdf

[jont]

It's far more important to make sites display as best possible on small scale screens. I don't know how this would work but it's wrong to assume there'll be a good correlation between screen size and pixel count. Does the sellerdeck 'responsive' design do this or does it just adjust to the window pixel count?

The retina displays have thrown another spanner into the works with the higher resolution displays. Thankfully this is accommodated in CSS3 media queries using:

(min-resolution: 300dpi) {

}

to target these hi-res displays