Twigmo Vs. Responsive Conversion Rates

Earlier this year we updated one of our sites to the latest CS-Cart version, as well as the latest Twigmo version. Our mobile vs. desktop traffic was around 60% / 40%. As we previously only had a desktop site and no mobile site, we were excited to start using Twigmo.



However to our suprise our mobile conversion rate for phones has not increased at all and our tablet conversion rate has drastically decreased by about 50%! Therefore we've decided to go with a new repsonsive design in hopes of changing this alarming trend.



I'm curious if anyone else has had a similar experience using Twigmo? And for those of you who have responsive sites, have you noticed an improvement in your mobile conversion rates? Any mobile tips and advice are greatly appreciated, cheers.

We have been trying to responsive site for a little over a week now. Our sales went down pretty drastically. We were actually kind of surprised. Not only was the site extremely slow with the responsive theme (and we're on a dedicated server) but we think there is a bug in Chrome when you go to the secure link.



On the speed, I am guessing it is because it appears to load every image rather large and does create the thumbnails the same. That way it can resize. All I know is you go to the front page and wait 40 seconds for each image to show up.



We did not use Twigmo. We were using the the mobile app from Seonid but did not install it yet on version 4. Last I had heard they were going to update it, but I kind of forgot to get back with them because I wanted to use the responsive part.

Remember the difference between a mobile skin and a responsive skin. One detects the device and utilizes a completely different skin (service in the case of Twigmo) and layout, and the other just adapts itself to the size of the screen without regard for what the device actually is (layout can be adjusted too, but much less radically). Both have value, depends on your target and your customer base.

[quote name='mayanetwork' timestamp='1408400418' post='189897']

Any mobile tips and advice are greatly appreciated, cheers.

[/quote]



We released the Additional Block Settings add-on recently. If you decide to choose responsive template instead of twigmo, our module allows to enable required blocks for the mobile, tablet and desktop view only. No core files are affected by the module. Hope it will help you to create necessary layout for the mobile devices and increase your conversion

Thank you all for your feedback. Here is some important info from Google's Best Practices Guidelines (https://developers.g…artphone-sites/):



Overview of Google's recommendations



Google supports three different configurations for creating smartphone-optimized websites:[list]

[]Responsive design: serves the same HTML for one URL and uses CSS media queries to determine how the content is rendered on the client side. This removes the possible glitches of user-agent detection and frees users from redirects. This is Google's recommended configuration.

[/list]

And…



Why responsive design



We recommend using responsive web design because it has many good aspects:[list]

[
]Using a single URL for a piece of content makes it easier for your users to interact with, share, and link to your content, and a single URL for the content helps Google's algorithms assign the indexing properties for the content.

[]No redirection is needed for users to get to the device-optimized view, which reduces loading time. Also, user agent-based redirection is error-prone and can degrade your site's user experience (see “Pitfalls when detecting user agents” section for details).

[
]It saves resources for both your site and Google's crawlers. For responsive web design pages, any Googlebot user agents needs to crawl your pages once, as opposed to crawling multiple times with different user agents, to retrieve your content. This improvement in crawling efficiency can indirectly help Google index more of the site's contents and keep it appropriately fresh.

[/list]

Source: https://developers.g…artphone-sites/

[quote name='clips' timestamp='1408418151' post='189905']

We have been trying to responsive site for a little over a week now. Our sales went down pretty drastically. We were actually kind of surprised. Not only was the site extremely slow with the responsive theme (and we're on a dedicated server) but we think there is a bug in Chrome when you go to the secure link.



On the speed, I am guessing it is because it appears to load every image rather large and does create the thumbnails the same. That way it can resize. All I know is you go to the front page and wait 40 seconds for each image to show up.



We did not use Twigmo. We were using the the mobile app from Seonid but did not install it yet on version 4. Last I had heard they were going to update it, but I kind of forgot to get back with them because I wanted to use the responsive part.

[/quote]



We too have noticed a drop in both sales and traffic after we installed the responsive VIVAShop theme. Have your sales/traffic improved since your post or have you gone another direction? You would think since Google's official recommendation is to use responsive design that they would “reward” you with better rankings and therefore traffic, but ours continues to drop.

Our sales have not been good since our upgrade! I'm not so sure it is Google not liking the responsive as it is something else. I have not narrowed it down quite yet as to what the issue is, but I really think it is a combination. Here is what we've seen so far:

  • When we updated to 4.2.? for some reason we lost about 400 links from Google.
  • Customers have contacted us to tell us our website did not work when they left the shopping cart and went back to view products. This was an error caused by Firefox so we had to leave the site in https.
  • Now that we leave the site in https it will run fine for a day, maybe two when it is in responsive mode but something seems to happen where the page starts going DOG SLOW. We end up going back to the normal site and off the responsive and it does fine. After a few days we can switch back to the responsive, but every time, within a day or so the site starts loading really slow again.
  • Now we have learned that at some point along the “upgrade” road CS-Cart did not bring all of the “states” for each country over. One example if Italy only showed one state when it should have had 100+. The UK was missing things too.
  • Paypal stopped working correctly and stopped charging customers for shipping. Some of those customers abandoned and never checked out.

    I could go on and on, and on.



    So again, I'm not so sure it is just the responsive side. The cart has become riddled with more and more errors with little in the line of “fixes”. Not to mention they wait TOO LONG in between minor fixes and make too many major changes that break things. They need to go to a model that releases small “fixes” more frequently and stop waiting a couple of months at a pop. The other thing CS-Cart needs to start doing is operating their business off the same version we are using! They tweak theirs so much more and leave the community hanging.



    As posted before, sadly we are looking at alternatives and better support their software. All of the bells and whistles just are not worth much if the cart breaks so much. There was a time when CS did offer better service, but sadly, in my opinion, it has gone the wrong direction. They moved to a model of wanting to create all kinds of “secondary” software sites like Searchanise and Twigmo instead of fixing their software they wanted to get an additional monthly fee. We have thought about reinstalling a fresh copy of CS and starting all over again on one of our larger sites, but I'm just not so sure I want to waste the time to go through that. It really doesn't feel like CS is going to improve any time soon.

[quote name='mayanetwork' timestamp='1413485947' post='194382']

We too have noticed a drop in both sales and traffic after we installed the responsive VIVAShop theme. Have your sales/traffic improved since your post or have you gone another direction? You would think since Google's official recommendation is to use responsive design that they would “reward” you with better rankings and therefore traffic, but ours continues to drop.

[/quote]



This is not good news. I too have recently switched to the VIVAshop theme. It's only been a week, but I'm pretty sure my rankings have slipped even in that short time. That might not all be VIVAshop's theme, because at the same time I did a major category overhaul as well. I did, however, create 301 redirects for anything that got a new URL. I really like the theme, though, so I hope I can stay with it and keep my rankings. We'll see.

[quote name='kingsleypress' timestamp='1413488737' post='194386']

This is not good news. I too have recently switched to the VIVAshop theme. It's only been a week, but I'm pretty sure my rankings have slipped even in that short time. That might not all be VIVAshop's theme, because at the same time I did a major category overhaul as well. I did, however, create 301 redirects for anything that got a new URL. I really like the theme, though, so I hope I can stay with it and keep my rankings. We'll see.

[/quote]

We too really like the theme and have received positive feedback, however as we previously posted here today (http://forum.cs-cart.com/topic/37450-vivashop-and-traffic-is-falling-anyone-else/) our traffic and sales have continued to drop significantly since the day we installed the VIVAShop theme. However we also updated to 4.2.2 around the same time. We have no idea if it's a combination of both or just the cart update or just the theme installation. Anyone experiencing similar issues?

Please note that I do NOT have the Vivashop them. I am talking the basic, out of the box responsive theme from CS-Cart. I personally believe that is where part of the issue is. So my response is more to the basic responsive theme from CS and not the 3rd party add on. Sorry for the confusion.