Much ado about templates
The design I’m currently working on, a custom ZenCart ecommerce template, is coming along very nicely. The reaction from the client told me I’m on the right track- “Very impressive! When I first took a look I couldn’t quite comprehend that this is going to be MINE. It’s the sort of site you look at and think….wish I could have one like that!”
Ecommerce website templates are particularly challenging. A lot of the design is dictated by the shopping cart script interface and what the code generates and where it needs to put it, and the rest is dictated by user expectations- if you design the shopping cart template to look TOO different and unexpected, and rearrange TOO much, the user has no clue what is going on, that they’re even ON a shopping cart site, or that they have the ability to buy something, a state of affairs that is NOT good for converting site visitors to buyers.
But I just have an allergic reaction to making my designs look like all the others. If you browse through the ZenCart Showcase and check out a few dozen of the designs you’ll see what I mean. There are some nice designs, but that boxy OSCommerce look persists through almost all of the entries there (ZenCart is a fork off the original OSCommerce shopping cart script.) Almost all those shopping cart sites seem to have those damn right and left side boxes into which the shopping cart script dumps info, and by the time you’ve scrolled through a half dozen or so, the designs all start to look the same, no matter the graphics or the colors. It gets to the point where when you see a TWO column design with boxes only on one side it looks incredibly original . . . oh, sheesh, that’s just SAD.
Now that’s where things get sticky for someone like me who wants to maybe step out of the box- people surfing a shopping cart expect those dang boxes, people are used to seeing those dang boxes . . . so how to give the suggestion of the box without the box?
I got around it with the SomeStore CubeCart Template one way . . . but with this new ecommerce template I took it an entirely different direction and wrapped up the whole package in a nice, pretty bow.
Stay tuned, we’ll be launching the Pretty Plus Lingerie Boutique probably within the week, and you’ll soon see how boxes just don’t have to be boxy anymore!
