Mobile design for SellerDeck

[fergusw]

Following on from customer requests and feedback from the recent SellerDeck conference I thought it best to post some information about teclan's latest work on mobile designs for SellerDeck.
We have developed a SellerDeck design framework that implements the "responsive design" methodology and released the first SellerDeck mobile ready template into the wild.

What does this mean?
One website. One platform (SellerDeck). One design - different displays across multiple devices.

i.e. your website will dynamically change its look, layout and functionality depending on the width of the device it is viewed upon.

It is best described on our website here:
http://www.teclan.com/webdesign/sell...le_design.html
{link to demo on above page. Note: To see the "dynamic changes" in action simply reduce the width of your browser whilst looking at the live demo}

and if you are wondering whether a mobile ready SellerDeck website is something you should have then take a read of just some of the statistics on our blog article here:
http://www.teclan.com/blog/latest/wh...ebsite-design/

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter if you want to be kept up to date with new templates as they are released or examples of our latest designs with this framework as they are launched.

[completerookie]

does your mobile version totally suppress excess data (html) from being downloaded or does it just "hide" the content from the user but still download the hidden code. ?

Most mobile users may be on a MB limit per month

[nileshpa]

Thanks Fergus. This is quite interesting. I did try it out, on my PC as well as HTC mobile phone and it does looks good. Apart from the usual mobile device caveats such as bandwidth, streamline code, small low-res images etc, I do have a couple of reservations, being a footwear retailer. Almost all my products have at least one attributes, namely size but in some cases two attributes i.e, Size & Colour. How it fits together is something I need to look at, such as hiding out of stock sizes.
I'll discuss it with you off-line in the next few days.

Regards, Nilesh

[fergusw]

does your mobile version totally suppress excess data (html) from being downloaded or does it just "hide" the content from the user but still download the hidden code. ?

Most mobile users may be on a MB limit per month

Hi Kevin, great point to raise.
One of the few areas where we expect "responsive design" to improve on is the bandwidth aspects associated with the pages. There are techniques around to serve content in a more optimised way using javascript and cookies which as they become more mature may well be adopted.
Where possible we try and make the images "flexible" and scalable to reduce download and utilise the same images (e.g. products) where applicable.

Whilst there is an argument to be made for both separate mobile sites vs responsive design however we believe that for SellerDeck users, with a properly and thoughtfully designed responsive design, you can have the best of both worlds.
Also, in terms of mobile bandwidth with the roll-out of 4G and many people using wireless for access this will become a diminishing issue.
Definitely worth bearing in mind when dealing with responsive designs.......

[fergusw]

Thanks Fergus. This is quite interesting. I did try it out, on my PC as well as HTC mobile phone and it does looks good. Apart from the usual mobile device caveats such as bandwidth, streamline code, small low-res images etc, I do have a couple of reservations, being a footwear retailer. Almost all my products have at least one attributes, namely size but in some cases two attributes i.e, Size & Colour. How it fits together is something I need to look at, such as hiding out of stock sizes.
I'll discuss it with you off-line in the next few days.

Regards, Nilesh

Hi Nilesh,
By all means give me a call. We've found in testing that multiple options (checkboxes, dropdowns etc) have to be carefully laid out and worked out particularly for fingers on mobiles. Clear vertical separation in the product layout between attributes generally works very well in these cases.
In terms of "hiding out of stock sizes" - you should take a look at the V12 BETA (SellerDeck 2013) as it does just that out of the box for you!

[completerookie]

be carefull of using the "once 4g comes" card
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/377695/e...oken-in-5-mins suggest that the costs of 4g will be quite expensive,
the actual speed may well be high in comparrison, but thats not the same as the monthly allowance,

theres some interesting Q & A about the new tarrifs
don't get me wrong, the idea is great, but unless you totally supress the actual downloading of the data, the speed has not increased

[Steve G Griggs]

EE's 4g is expensive I believe £36 buys you 500mb per month, and it's currently quite a limited service (only some cities) with some problems over indoor data speeds. We can only wait and see what happens when o2 and Vodafone get theirs up and running. Also only a small number of handsets can use 4g too.