I’ve used freeway up to 5.5 for an e-commerce web site for around 5 years. I’m concerned that the lack of mobile responsiveness is going to affect the google ranking. I’m considering upgrading to FW7 which will mean re-building the site from scratch, 100 pages = 80 key products with a total of around 800+ variations.
Before I start such a momentous task, could anyone give some feedback on the ease of use and most importantly the effectiveness of FW7 for an ecommerce site.
Site i’m looking to rebuild is (.wetroomsdirect dot net)
If there are any examples I could look at, it would be a great help. Also, if this is a good solution, can anyone suggest a template from the Marketplace I could start with?
As someone who has been around FreeWay for a while, and built many e-commerce sites, I appreciate your pain. I think the answer depends on your budget and/or the amount of time you have to invest.
I’m not aware of a template in Marketplace that also has a built-in e-commerce solution. For me, I dove into the FW7/responsive design pond with a much simpler blog-style website. I made a few 5-7 page websites and got the hang of how FW7 works with inline style and responsiveness before tackling responsive and e-commerce together at once. Do you have that flexibility? If not, perhaps it makes sense to pay someone to build a FW template for you?
I’m taking it on a case by case basis. I have a few websites that have the budget to built from scratch in FW7. For those that don’t, they’re stuck at FW 5.5 and incremental updates. For what it’s worth, once you get the hang of FW7, it’s a joy and I cringe every time I have to open a document in FW 5.5.
I just had a (very quick, admittedly) look through your source code and I don’t think making your site responsive is going to be as painful as you think. It’s almost like it’s been created with making it responsive in mind! Have you tried it out in the trial yet?
From looking at it, all you’ll need to do is import all your images as pass-throughs (there’s a checkbox on the File>Import dialog) and then change the widths and alignment values for the main sections at the various breakpoints. For extra points you can make the whole thing flexible, but you certainly don’t need to.
Cheers,
Joe
On 23 Mar 2015, at 14:22, NeilMT email@hidden wrote:
Hi all,
I’ve used freeway up to 5.5 for an e-commerce web site for around 5 years. I’m concerned that the lack of mobile responsiveness is going to affect the google ranking. I’m considering upgrading to FW7 which will mean re-building the site from scratch, 100 pages = 80 key products with a total of around 800+ variations.
Before I start such a momentous task, could anyone give some feedback on the ease of use and most importantly the effectiveness of FW7 for an ecommerce site.
Site i’m looking to rebuild is (.wetroomsdirect dot net)
If there are any examples I could look at, it would be a great help. Also, if this is a good solution, can anyone suggest a template from the Marketplace I could start with?
I’m feeling more positive after your comments. I’ll give the FW7 trial a go today, hopefully I’ll be able to make it work for me as I’ve always enjoyed using the Freeway earlier versions and always had good results. I’d much rather stick with this than swap over to an ecommerce package.
Sure is, Neil! In-flow (box model) is a great jumping off point for responsive. As Joe referenced above, you are well on your way with how you set up your original FW 5.5 site.
Good luck and let the great folks here know when you get stuck!