Are there any simple guides to making a site responsive

[David Clarke]

I recently upgraded to sellerdeck 2014 and am trying out some responsive designs. I am having a variety of simple problems.

For example, my current site has one column on the left. Change to a responsive site and I have one on either side. I have told Sellerdeck not to have a right side bar and now I have a big gap there and the centre section will not fill it up.

To me this seems like a simple problem and I just don't know how to fix it. I am sure there will be others. Is there a simple guide somewhere to changing an old site to a responsive one? On the Sellerdeck site I could not find one, and only invitations to pay them to change it. In these forums I found a coupe of references but these are obviously on a case-by-case basis.. It seems to be that they introduce something like this then there should be a basic "how to.." set up somewhere as well, which I must have missed.

I actually don't have enough time to do this properly at the moment either but have to do it because of "Adolf Google" making changes.

[fergusw]

Hi David,
You're not alone here. Google's "mobilegeddon" is going to bite a lot of online businesses who do not make the change.

With regards to your question this is one of those cases where the word "simple" is entirely subjective. It will be a completely different challenge depending on your own technical experience, specifically your experience with designing responsive websites.
The primary challenge of designing a responsive website is in designing multiple design layouts in one website. It's not enough to design a website that works on desktop and then "design out" elements to get it to fit or look OK on a mobile. To be effective and convert well the mobile design has to be specifically designed for mobiles, the tablet design and desktop designs likewise. Different navigation, different product/section layouts, different buttons, different features etc.

You have 3 main options open to you:

1. Use an out of the box Sellerdeck responsive template and "tweak" its colour schemes/logos
2. Use a theme and pay someone to "tweak" it for you (NB: SellerDecks £6000+ tailored design)
3. Get a SellerDeck design company to build your responsive design from the ground up, device by device.

To give you an idea of costs SellerDeck are currently offering bespoke responsive design service starting from £10,000
http://www.sellerdeck.co.uk/index.php/managed-services/category/how-the-service-works

[completerookie]

I've been looking at this and thinking what the heckk does "responsive design" mean,

take a look at Responsive web design tips from BBC News
and
BBC - CSS Guidelines

the first one is readable by most people, the second one needs some understanding of CSS to get the most from it, but there is "help icons" to explain why they do it.

they may be useful to some people

[David Clarke]

Fergus - I am going for A definitely. Mine is a small business and there is no way we can pay several thousand pounds to redesign a website that was working fine until Google decided to change things.

What I was hoping was that there was a simple document from Sellerdeck, which I could not find, which explains the basics of changing the website to "responsive design".

Thanks for the links to the BBC, but that actually makes things more complicated! For example this says that the website should be designed in one column only. And yet the 3 responsive designs we have in sellerdeck give me 3 columns - left, right and main area in the middle.

I am hoping if I use one of the sellerdeck themes I will be ok as far as Google is concerned.

[fergusw]

Hi David,
I think a lot of businesses are going to have to compromise with a "styled theme" in Sellerdeck etc just to get their website to a responsive design.
Changing an element in the responsive layout is not as straight forward as it used to be.
I do agree, however, that a simple, visual wire frame layout document would be useful explaining some of the higher-level design concepts of the Sellerdeck responsive layouts would be useful.

[mediamole]

Fergus - I am going for A definitely. Mine is a small business and there is no way we can pay several thousand pounds to redesign a website that was working fine until Google decided to change things.

Hi David, there are many options that are not as costly as London agency prices. Perhaps give me a call and email should you need assistance.

[guccij]

Frightened by dire threats from Google, I spent the last week adapting our much-loved website designed by Lee Hackett to a basic responsive design with Sellerdeck's out of the box 2014 solution.

Like others, we do not have gazillions of thousands to spend on a ground up redesign of what was a very happy little site which has kept my head above water financially for several years.

The work I did involved an hierarchical import (took several attempts, persevered thanks to Mike Hughes' help on this thread), a separate import of some variables, a quick glance at the css, and a a bodge of the logo.

It is working since this morning. I hope Google finds it acceptable. I don't like it personally and there's lots wrong with it visually and every other way, but if it stops us being blackballed then so be it.

So the lesson I offer is this: you have to accept that your site will look very different on a desktop to what you are used to. It is doable, even when you know nearly nothing like me.

When I am rich (not holding my breath) I will pass it back to a designer and let them make it look pretty.

[chickenhouseman]

I'm wondering whether to jump ship and go to something like shopify. With Seller Deck offering responsive at £10k and Teclan with prices starting at £12.5k it looks like I may have just been priced out of sellerdeck unless I can do it myself.

[Buzby]

What we need here is some middle ground for both Sellerdeck's future, and other third party companies who rely on Sellerdeck users for designs and plugins.

It seems we have 2 options here, a choice of 2 Sellerdeck templates that are very basic, or paying over £10k for a custom option.

Ok, I'm not really sure on the work involved to justify £10k for a design but surely the majority of the work is the functioning site, with say the last 10% the actual visual element.

Would it not be possible for one of the designers on here, or Sellerdeck just to use a custom £10k template which has already been produced, change the 10% that makes it a unique looking site and then license it as a template for a few hundred pounds to the masses?

[saucysal]

What I am doing

Likewise I cannot spend thousands on getting it done for me. To me (a business owner, not a website designer), the options are:

1. Start afresh, using one of the rd templates provided, work on the design to suit, and then bring in data from present site. By the way, you can remove the right side bar by just selecting one side bar in the Wizard - I have done.

2. Bring in snapshot of present site and then change the templates to rd - I am not doing this as suspect will be messy.

3. If multi-user, license new site called Whatever, bring in snapshot of present site into this, Create snapshot again. Licence another new site, called Whichever, work on design on this. Export this design into Whatever. Snapshot again. Then work on this.

At present, I am doing option 1, for one of our websites that getting very few visitors, as a test and practice. If this works fine, I shall then move onto another site that gets a few visitors, which is similar to my main site. Then I shall progress to the main site, doing option 3. that is bringing the second site's design into a snapshot site, just having to edit colour scheme and logo mainly.

Sarah

[feemish]

I have found editing the new responsive designs impossible. Even simple colour changes made in Design:Themes dont work as expected.
It seems essential that there is a guide on how to make basic design changes to the responsive designs (and I mean basic!) Just things like background colour etc.
Just so that at the very least we can make our responsive sites look a tiny bit different from each other!

[saucysal]

I haven't found this problem.

I noted down the colours used on my present site in Design: Themes, the file name of the logo, etc, and set up the new rd design (Smart) with these same colours, and the logo, and all was fine.

I have had a few problems, however. I have had trouble adding some text to the Checkout pages, and cannot find where in the style sheet to change the padding in the Main Menu Bar so that the items are spaced across the page when on a desktop.

You can see what the new responsive design looks like on a mobile or tablet, landscape or portrait, by doing Site Preview and then reducing the browser window accordingly. I have been quite pleased with the results.

Sarah

[David Clarke]

I am getting odd problems - not changing colours but removing the side bar, which obviously works for Sarah above, but not for me.

I only have a single user licence and one website. I can't make the changes live until I am happy with them, which means I can't run it through the Google mobile checker to see if it is happy with them.

I too have looked at alternatives but I can't see how something like shopify is that much cheaper than Sellerdeck. I don't pay out so much at once but I have to pay every month instead.

I guess there is not a simple guide to changing. I recently had an email from Sellerdeck inviting me to a half day demo of Sellerdeck 16 amongst other things (for a cost of £25). I am sure if they did a half day training session for people moving to responsive designs and charged £25-£50 for it they would get a few takers.

[chickenhouseman]

David if you ran it on another machine you can run 2 copies of sellerdeck - I think they regard this as acceptable use. Then you just have to find some cheap hosting or possibly host it yourself during testing.

I did some work on a shopify site for a friend and it seemed quite easy to use. All designs are responsive, you pay monthly but that includes hosting. at around $79/month. There are additional costs for extras like integration with Sage so you could be upto $150/month £100. which includes card processing with only a 1% transaction fee on top.

I'd still like to stay with sellerdeck as I know it fairly well and can manage little tweaks. It really depends on what people start to quote. I spent £2000 last time I had it reworked but £10000 plus is too much.

[saucysal]

Removing Right Sidebar

David: as well as changing to one side bar in Settings: Site Options: Design Wizard (in virgin out of-box site, not a snapshot), I also left blank in Site Options: General the page and column widths.

I am going for a full screen design this time, as it will automatically resize depending on device, screen size and aspect.

Sarah