Tag - mobile

Thu, 16 Feb 2012

Walt

Walt

Thu, 16 Feb 2012, 14:42

44 comments

Shop Update: Product Variants

Since October last year the ShopBuilder has gone from strength to strength and our customers have now built over 135,000 shops. There are already 168,552 products on sale. As Leila mentioned in an earlier blog we have been taking your recommendations on board for which features you'd like to see next and Product Variants (Options) came top of the list. Thanks to your feedback, today we pushed out an update that now allows you to apply variations to all your products e.g colour, range, size etc.


Variants

To update your shop to use variants, you need to use the update tab on the Editor for each ShopBuilder section. If you've not done this before it's very straightforward. Go to your shop page whilst logged in, click the shop on the page so it's highlighted and then go to the Editor. Click on the Update tab and click on the Update widget button. And then Save your page. You'll need to do this for the four sections (Product Catalog, Product Detail, Shopping Cart and Sale Confirmation) which you can work through using the drop down on the toolbar.

ShopBuilder Update Tab
Getting the new updates is easy

Adding variations is also very easy. Go to your Product List on the Shop section and edit that product. You will now see a section in the middle called Product Options which allows you set up product options or variations up to a maximum of 50 per product.

Product Variants in Editor
How you set up variants within the Editor

So not only does this give you more flexibility over the products you sell, allow you to add one base product and offer a range of variations, but it also means, for example, that if you run a Standard account you can run a shop that offers up to 2500 different items or units for sale (50 products x 50 variations).

Product Variants in View
How your customers will see variants in action on your website

As with other features of the ShopBuilder, Product Variations will also appear on your Mobile Shop and your Facebook Shop (where they've been set up correctly).


Bonus

Now, for the eagle-eyed amongst you, who spotted the bonus feature?

We managed to sneak in Duplicate a Product to the release. This will make it easier for our shop builders to easily copy a product which you can then modify or adapt as you see fit on your Product List. Using the Edit drop-down for each product you can quickly copy a product into your Product List.

Duplicate Product
Duplicating an existing product is now very simple


So, what's next?

Well, the next release is very exciting and will see our first version of the mobile editor going out the door. The editor will give you access to mobile version styling (colours) and include/exclude content from the mobile version. For those of you who consider mobile technology to be a key channel to visitors accessing your sites, this tool will give you more control. Obviously the HTML5 work will provide even greater benefits but that won't hit the streets until Q3.

So, what's next for the shop? We've had some great feedback from our customers and we now wish to find out what the next most important feature is for you to have added to the ShopBuilder. We have selected the next top 3 requested features that we keep hearing again and again, but we'd like to get more specific feedback on what we build next. So if you want to have your say on what shop feature you'd like to see developed next please cast your vote in our quick and simple survey. So, over to you.


Lastly, what we have fixed!

We fixed a number of bugs in this release, many of which were minor. The headline bug fixes were:

  • Google Webmaster Tools verification code is again being added to the HTML
  • You can now scroll again in edit mode across all supported browsers
  • Facebook Shop image popup gallery is now working correctly again

And that's another release.

Tue, 20 Dec 2011

Joe

Joe

Tue, 20 Dec 2011, 10:28

17 comments

Christmas release!

Ho ho ho. We thought we'd get a few more things out in the St Nick of time just before the holidays. We'll follow up later in the week with a summary of everything from 2011 and a hint at what's to come in 2012. But here's what's just been shipped.

Updates to the Shop Checkout page

Your customers can now set product quantities on the Checkout page when buying multiple items. And we've also made more clear the checkout options via PayPal, or paying by Card (not requiring a PayPal account). Plus there's a shipping drop down box.

Shopping Cart Updates

NB. To get the Checkout page updates, you'll need to navigate to the 'Checkout page' (by using the shop drop down list in the Editor), and then on the Page Editor click 'Update template'.

Shipping updates

We've added the ability for you to set domestic and international shipping rates for your product purchases. This is part of a long line of shipping based features that we will continue with next year, but for now this is one additional variable you can change.

Shipping Options

Category tweaks

You can now hide categories from the list so you can organise your products in secret ways, and then link to special hidden categories without them having to appear in the Category menu. You can also rename the 'All category'

Hidden Categories

Mobile render tweaks

We've updated the way we generate the mobile versions of your site to better organise the content we show. Items are grouped more logically and additional images will now show in the HTML version. Previously images covered by text would not be displayed, but provided at least 50% of the image is 'visible' we'll now show the image in the mobile version. We have another release slated for early 2012 which will further enhance the mobile version.

Mobile Shop

New Shop templates

We've updated all the shop templates to include the categories from the last release, and also the quantities, shipping and payment options from this release. We hope you'll agree there's some lovely stuff in there!

New December Templates

That's all for now. The team are already working on more goodies for early next year, but we'll soon be putting on our warmest socks and settling down for a good long sleep over the hols. We hope you have a wonderful time and a welcome break too.

As always, thoughts and feedback welcome.

Thu, 1 Dec 2011

Joe

Joe

Thu, 1 Dec 2011, 20:33

27 comments

Shop update: Categories!

As many of you will have noticed, we launched the long awaited ShopBuilder about a month ago and as promised we're going to have a continuous stream of new shop features coming as quickly as we can bake them in the Moonfruit oven. (We don't really bake our software, but you get the idea).

We've had a great response to the shop launch with over 45,000 shops having been built in the last month. And we've also had a lot of feedback from you about the additional features you'd like us to build as quickly as possible. We love the feedback, so keep it coming.

So first out of the oven is the new Category feature. Many of you were asking for it, so here it is.

hp_image.jpg
Shop homepage with Category links

Categories allow you to create groupings for your products and have different ways of ordering and arranging them to suit the different audiences you may be addressing or targeting. In the shop manager you can now add categories and assign products to categories. One product can be in more than one category and the list order of products in each category can be different.

cat_editor_image.png
Category editor

Categories have their own URL so you can link directly to a category sub heading. We've also created a new link type on the link tab in the Editor so that any image or link can link to a category allowing you to construct your own navigation. You can add category links direct from the menu of your site too, so that your normal site menu can offer different category pages.

link_editor_image.jpg
Link editor with new category link type

And if that wasn't enough, there is also a new category link widget in the File Manager which automatically creates a list of all your categories and links to each of them. You can customise the style of this category link widget and change the button style, font and colours.

cat_list_image.jpg
Category list widget on right

The mobile and Facebook views have also been updated to incorporate the category view. So if you have more than two categories, your Facebook shop will show the category names and images, which link through to the category product lists. And on the mobile view you can navigate to the category types from the drop down at the top of the page.

FB_shop_image.jpg
Facebook shop with categories

mobile.PNG
Mobile shop with categories

So that's about it for now. All these images are taken from our shopdemo.moonfruit.com website, so feel free to have a look and a play there.


So what's next?

We're working on some improvements to the shipping options and the ability to change the quantities of items on the checkout page - so your customers can buy multiple numbers of an item more easily. These should be out before the end of the year (testing permitting). Then early next year we will bring out product variants, and after that basic stock control and discount/coupon options. After that? Well, some more stuff - helped by the feedback we get from you guys.

Wed, 2 Feb 2011

Joe

Joe

Wed, 2 Feb 2011, 11:10

163 comments

Let's try that again – New release 2nd Feb 2011!!

And this time it's working! There has been a huge amount of work that has gone into this release as some of the core parts of the Moonfruit data structure have been rewritten to support the mobile HTML roadmap (V1.0 in this release) and the new Blog and e-commerce features that will follow (blog first, then e-commerce).

Mobile HTML version (V1.0)

So a large part of the work in the past 6 months has been in setting up the technology so that we can display your sites in the full Flash version (as before), a desktop HTML version (if you don't have Flash), and now a mobile HTML version (which is optimised for the small screen). We'll publish a dedicated article on just this topic in the next couple of days, but below is an idea of how the sites look in the different versions.

3Devices.png

The mobile optimised version is a single column render of your site in HTML. This allows the content to be displayed as a long vertical list which is easier to read and the user can scroll down through the objects on the page. The site navigation is done by a roll out menu, so the majority of the screen space is dedicated to your content.

This is Version 1.0 of the mobile HMTL and we will continue to upgrade it over the coming months. If you have cases where you think the mobile version is not displaying the right content in the right order, let us know and we'll add it to our test cases. We'll also add specific mobile styling into future releases to give you more options for customising it.

NB. If you are looking through the HTML version on your mobile and see a page with no contents in it, just refresh the page and it will then display the contents correctly. This 'empty page' will only happen the very first time a page is visited following this new release, so it won't happen for all users and will happen only once.

Shapes

The new shapes widgets allow you to apply effects, fills and gradients to a variety of different shape objects. These are seriously useful for customising the basic design of your site. We'll be looking to add this kind of functionality to other objects in the coming months, including text boxes, images and the blog, all of which will benefit from the improved design you can achieve with it.

newShapes.png

Let us know how you get on with them and the kinds of things you use them for.

No background option

We've added a new setting to allow you to turn off the Flash background of your site so that the HTML background is shown across the full browser. This allows you to achieve the 'full screen image' or 'chunky header/footer' styles that are common in the new contemporary web look and feel. How about a full screen image, shove in a few rounded corner shapes with drop shadow under your text boxes for legibility and bish-bash-bosh there you have it ;-)

noBackgroundImage.png

And before you ask, tiling options for your background image will follow shortly ;-)

That's it for now. We regret we can't bring you the blog at the same time, but there's a bit more work to do on that. 2010 was a big year for us in terms of investment in the infrastructure to make certain features possible, and 2011 will be the year when all these features start hitting the streets. Expect a lot more from us in 2011. We expect more from ourselves.