I am always going on about the importance of customer Product Reviews and am really looking forward to the forthcoming changes in V4.1.  I would love to see the option of adding the latest x product reviews on the home page.  Not just a list of products that have been recently reviewed but the overall star rating, small product image, and short excerpt of the review text.

 

Matt

 

 

The above scrolling thing does nothing for me.  I see this as uninteresting as the new v4 hover effect on the category page - just something to turn off and to work around when editing code. (Sorry.)

 

Our most frequent requests/needs are the ability to:

 

- feature categories on the home page rather than individual products

 

- use different images (either for products or categories) on the home page than those used in the interior pages.  The idea being that product images in some industries are very poor.  The images on the store are selected on the basis that strong images were available for an isolated selection of products.  The images used for the interior pages for those same products are the manufacturer's "inferior" images (or smaller) so that they don't clash with the rest of the product line, but we do happen to  have nicer images for the home page. 

Interior page images are frequently a different size than home page images.  We store those home page images at a different path, EI could provide a 4th image reference which is intended only for  home page use - for example.

 

- Arranging "new arrivals" in the same horizontal layout as "featured products".

 

We've developed an alternate strategy, featured on http://www.madcowcutlery.com - www.madcowcutlery.com , http://www.ahamodernliving.com - www.ahamodernliving.com and http://www.koolertek.com - www.koolertek.com where we administer the images/links/text/prices via a seperate configuration file. Using that strategy, we have ultimate control over the layout, while providing a mechanism by which the merchant may alter their selections. If we had that level of control via the store admin, that would rock.

 

Ultimately, I think messing with the home page is less important than other possible improvements.

 

One of the most important feature enhancements I would wish to see, rather than dancing around the edges and playing with the home page, would be the ability to put products on sale without touching standard pricing.  I'd want the sale price to override the online price, and to be controlled by a begin/end date setting.  Establishing a store or category-wide sale, perhaps using a percentage, would add flexibility.  And yes, I understand this requires a greater effort than home page cosmetic changes.  But I see it as a critical need.

Greg: it might do "nothing" for you, but do you realize that virtually ALL of the leading e-commerce Web sites have a slider or "gallery" element as the #1 element shown on the home page? Again, not one of the elements on the home page. The number one element on the home page!

Let's just look at a few:

• http://www.staples.com - Staples
  9.8 B in sales. Automatic slider with 4 offers shown.
• http://www.dell.com - Dell
  4.5 B in sales. Automatic slider with 5 offers shown.
  
• http://www.officedepot.com/ - Office Depot
  $4.1 B in sales. Automatic slider with 4 offers shown.

We could go on and on.

In any case, this is just one improvement that could be made to the home page, and that - according to empirical evidence - is one way chosen by most leading e-commerce stores to present their newest and best offers.

The home page is an absolutely crucial element of any e-commerce store. Please keep your suggestions and comments in this thread strictly focused on what tools and design elements could be added to the home page to make it a stronger, more effective "landing" page within a ProductCart-powered store.

Thanks!

 

Along the lines of the "slider" - I second Mark's comment about using something like JQuery - why not just use JQuery?? I think that this is a valuable option for the home page (but please make it so that it can be easily turned off).

 

And, instead of publishing to twitter why not make it an option to grab the JQuery "Recent Twitter Posts" thing - that displays them right on the home page? It is super easy to style!

 

I liked the featured categories idea as well.

 

OK, that was 3 comments!

 

Amy

This way the store owner could use the glider to send a customer to a particular category, a content page, or indeed a product if they so wish.

The three example stores given by EI : Staples, Dell and Office have made sure the flashiest images on their site take centre stage on their glider.

 

Matt

 

 

I like the idea of a slider.  Also, I think that you must consider the incorporation of RSS feeds, that today is very useful for maintaining updated to our customers of new products arrivals.

Here's the type of slider I would prefer to see in the next update:

 

 

 

http://flowplayer.org/tools/index.html - http://flowplayer.org/tools/index.html

 

I see it more as separate content manager with links to products versus a means of displaying the same product content . I could see a slider a la the PC example here for showing off accessories and up-sell items.

 

I'd love to use more of these tools (tabs, tooltips, more scrollables) throughout the site (any developers interested please let me know because I really want to get up to 4.1 with a new look by fall!). I know there are other solutions but take a look at the jQueryTools demos. Slick!

 

By the way, the jQueryTools "scrollable" tool is circular - it does not do the rewind the like PC example here. One of my pet peeves! ;-)

 

Thanks for listening!

 

http://www.talismanuk.com - http://www.talismanuk.com

 

This slider has the ability to embed URL's and add text below it so it's a lot more powerful than this particular example.

 

I am in the process of adding sliders to 3 other stores at the request of my customers so there is a demand for it.

 

In V4.1 I'd like to see a simple way to add featured products, new arrivals and best sellers in the right hand column in a similar way to how recently viewed products are added with an include file.

 

Nigel

 

Staples, Dell and Office Depot are all using Flash for their sliders.

 

If it's going to be manageable on the home page it will need to be coded in a way to allow the image selection from the control or the html editor.

 

Nigel

I was looking to spruce up my site with an image slider and notice that this was one of the main topics of conversation in this thread of last summer ?

 

Thanks

Matt

Last year we released what I think is a very nice solution here: our Home Page Sliders and Carousels.

It enables one to display any set of Featured, Special, New Arrivals and/or Best Sellers as either sliders (one product at a time using PC's vertical layout -- just like PC's "Product of the Month") or carousels (groups of products displayed at a time in the horizontal layout common on category pages & such) based on the controls PC already has for showing these products on your home page (no need to change anything in the control panel).

It also has a content slider for the main content area at the top of the page (which does not diminish the use of the content field for the home page in the control panel). Here one can build slides using any HTML content using PC's Content Pages (each slide's content control by a child content page).

We also added a top level category grid (pretty much the same thing as viewcategories.asp default display) one might elect to use on their home page as well.

Meanwhile, all "out of the box" PC options for one's homepage are still readily available. The combinations of what can be done are nearly endless.

You can check it out here:

http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/widgets/thirdparty/homepagesliderscarousels" rel="nofollow - http://wiki.earlyimpact.com/widgets/thirdparty/homepagesliderscarousels

I can't think of a more comprehensive, easier way to provide so many options to quickly and affordably give one's PC home page these cool features that are so common in contemporary site design.

For other than sales / product information.

Could be called PR feed.

All messages that are useful but don't need a lot of space.

Also the message center could be tied into Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Post once and message could potentially be broadcast to all channels:

- Home Page

- Newsletter

- Email

- Twitter

- Facebook

(checkboxes for broadcast message options)

Thanks

Josh