osCommece - product list(s)
Lists of products look different depending upon which page you are looking at, I think that a list that is themed throughout the site looks more professional than presenting a mish-mas of looks. So, I set out this morning to update my testing store to use the same look for all lists.
For reference, have a look at this (New Products for Month), then this (New Products Page), then this (Products of a certain Manufacturer) and finally this (Advanced Search Results). You can see the difference in the looks.
I decided to try to make all the product lists look like the "New Products for Month" listing.
First step was to deduce that the Advanced Search Result and Manufacturer Products use the "product_listing" module. It was fairly simple to recode this slightly to give the look I wanted. In fact I managed to cut down the code by about half.
Next up is to realise that the "New Products" page does not use the product_listing module even though it is a list of products! Whoever originally coded up this page needs a kick up the arse…
$Id: products_new.php,v 1.27 2003/06/09 22:35:33 hpdl Exp $
That'd be Harald Ponce de Leon then. Consider your arse kicked, HPDL. So, my next task is to try to come up with some logic inside the products_new page to enable it to use the new product_listing module that I just coded. I'll post back once that's completed.
Comment by Carine B — January 15, 2008 @ 8:22 pm
I have this kind of uniform layout for new products, specials and category listings.
Not for the search results. It is not that hard if you drop the sort options …
Comment by burt — January 16, 2008 @ 12:25 am
Hey Carine
Yep, it's all pretty simple - more a case of finding time to actually get on and do it - particularly hard as this is only for my own benefit, not for a client as such.
Comment by burt — January 16, 2008 @ 12:32 am
Hey, I just noticed that Keukenlust has had a new look! It is much nicer than it was previously - are you seeing more sales?
Comment by Carine B — January 16, 2008 @ 9:34 am
it took a while to get rid of all the html errors in ms2 and my previous layout attempts to have the look with the bars at the right come out properly in IE and firefox.
SEO urls has had the most effect on visitors, as far as conversions, yes that is improving too, but I don't think that is the correct measure. I think visitors staying longer because they are not put off by the red background is probably the best indicator.
With all the categories listed at the left, I have fewer clicks per visitor, but I think it is a better experience as the clicks are more meaningfull rather than traversing through a category page to get to a subcategory.
PS did you find the lightbox, do you know how to change the red background ?
Comment by burt — January 16, 2008 @ 9:42 am
Hey Carine - it does look good. I agree that the old look might have been turning away some visitors…
Lightbox - change the colour of the overlay.png file - or remove it totally from the lightbox.css