Some questions about Swift

[Buzby]

I am taking this downtime in the business to investigate what software is now the best option for me going forward.

Of course, the new Swift template does look promising, and it is what I am after, however with no demo it is difficult to trial to see if it fits my needs. I do have the Beta, but it is probably not fair to judge a product that isn’t a finished product.

Having viewed some of the sites already on Swift I do have a few issues with the template and wonder if Sellerdeck could advise.

1. With Google saying websites should be mobile first, it looks like you are still using large desktop images and resizing them and serving oversized images bloating the page. Are there any plans to include different images for different screen sizes? I’m sure this isn’t difficult to do and would speed up websites for mobile viewing.
2. Is it possible to turn non required scripts off on a page by page basis? For instance, if a site doesn’t use the slider, why load the CSS or script bloating the page, or only load it when the first page that requires it.
3. I have run many of the Swift websites through Google Page Speed Insights and they are all receiving poor results for mobile. Can you advise why this is, and if there are any plans to do something to remedy this.
4. Columns are an issue on my beta version when displaying fragments, which you have mentioned in the beta release. Has this been fixed in the product release, if not any timescale?

[Mike Hughes]

Good points.

I’m surprised the Swift template isn’t optimised for mobile first.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to do. We could probably work out most of it here on the community but that’s not going to be easy because:

a) Some of us, like me, don’t even have access to the template.
b) To do a proper job, as you say, we should also optimise the JS and CSS files which would need Sellerdeck to build them from a library as needed rather than including everything that might be needed.

It would be nice to see it happen though. I assume it is somewhere on Sellerdeck’s priority list.

Mike

[Buzby]

Playing about with it today I have found a few further issues.

Consistency in design

The drop down box is nice and wide with components, see here http://www.titanjewellery.co.uk/Mens...Ring-TI35.html

Change to attributes and the design isn't consistent with a smaller drop down box which doesn't look good, see here https://www.titanjewellery.co.uk/Men...Ring-Test.html

Also on Permutations if you select tick "Hide out of Stock Items" it doesn't hide the option from the drop down box. It does however give you an annoying box to say it is out of stock, however should it remove the option or better still grey the option out? choose "Finger Size L" on this page and add to cart to see. http://www.titanjewellery.co.uk/Mens...Ring-Test.html

[jeffnurse]

Hi Jason
I'm someone local to you, and a fellow Sellerdeck user since V7. I always keep an eye on your sites as I like the designs you've come up with. I too, am struggling with some inconsistencies of the Swift design, but generally like how it works. I noticed you have added more Tabs to the Description, Delivery and Returns message etc., please can you tell me how you did that? Thank you and good luck with the development.

Thanks
Jeff

[brucet]

Thanks for all the comments and questions

With regard to the Google mobile recommendations, we are working on several improvements, including better image handling and CSS compression. The Implementation Guide that is delivered with Swift gives the recommended size for each type of image in the catalogue. Following these will avoid oversized images in desktop view and prevent image resizing in the browser. This will improve page load times and reduce bandwidth overhead on all devices. Compressing images in software to around 80% will achieve a significant reduction in file size, with very little degradation in quality. We are working on a solution that will help you with this.

Note that incremental improvements delivered by Google Pagespeed recommendations, for example, are weighted towards enhancing the performance of database-driven sites. Sellerdeck Desktop's static HTML pages generally achieve much faster actual load times, giving them a significant ranking advantage regardless of any other tweaks.

Put simply, if it takes you ten minutes to run a mile, then a 20% improvement is significant. If you're already a sub-four minute miler, then it makes much less difference in the race.

All the same, we are committed to pressing home our advantage by implementing further improvements, and we're working actively towards this.

I will follow up the comments about consistency in design and seek to address them in a future release of Swift.

[brucet]

Jason, I've looked into the design issues you mentioned - the width of the choice drop-downs, and hiding out of stock permutations. I can't reproduce either of these in my own Swift test site. For the latter, see for example the demo site page https://swift.sellerdeck.co.uk/acata...-47.html#SID=1, where size J is out of stock in White Gold, and is hidden in the drop-down.

So it would be worth you reporting those to support, as they seem specific to your site, and should be resolvable. You will probably need to send a support snapshot.

[Buzby]

Many thanks Jeff,

It is fairly easy, just edit the layout customisable product layout. You will see 2 areas where the code is, just copy and paste the code and increase the number on the menu, so you will have home, menu1 & menu2. So increment to menu3 menu4 and so on. Then set up some variables at product level for the tab headings and content.

Mine was just in the Beta release, I now have V1 but haven't completed yet as just generally testing it.

[Buzby]

Hi Bruce,

Many thanks for your replies.

With regards to the design consistency, if you change the layout for permutation or component, and change back it breaks the design.

I don't know why out of stock items still show. I am going to just play with a clean install of the stock Swift template see if that works.

I'm not going to bother support with it as it is not going on a live site until a later version is released that fixes the columns with fragments.

[Buzby]

Hi Bruce,

I have just noticed that your demo of swift also has the same issue with out of stock items still showing. On your own site select White Gold and finger size K to see the error.

[Buzby]

Hi Bruce,

As these bugs haven't been acknowledged, can you advise how I report them please?