Mobile commerce is the next big thing. It’s been said for the last two years by many analysts, but at long last the e-commerce guru’s at Magento have finally produced a solution that could turn all of this speculation into a reality.
Econsultancy recently reported ‘Mobile is playing an increasingly important role in the way that customers browse and research purchases, with a third of smartphone users browsing retail sites on their phones.’ and also suggested that this might well be ‘The Year of Mobile‘. For most digital marketers mobile is either on the horizon or firmly parked on the doorstep.
Magento’s new Magento Mobile platform allows you to create mobile apps using the catalog, content, and business rules already set up in your Magento store, making it very easy for Magento merchants to create apps for their stores. For an overview of the Magento solution, take a look at this webinar – Magento Mobile Quick Start.
I recently blogged about 7 reasons why Magento could be the next ecommerce solution for you and this has quickly become reason number 8 for me! The ease of integration with your existing store and the nicely designed user interface makes it a no-brainer for anyone currently running Magento.
Designing your first Magento Mobile App
The user interface for the e-commerce application can be customised in a number of ways. In the webinar above they give a nice overview of the customisation and whilst it’s certainly not a blank canvas to work from it gives a brand enough control to make the App look and feel like their own.
In the screen shot above you can see some examples of the customisation – your logo and the ability to theme with colours of the various UI elements are two basic elements that you can control.
I’ve just started working on the visual design of my first Magento Mobile App and thought other designers might find the Fireworks PNG useful to download to help create concept designs. The PNG includes two ‘pages’ , the first is the Home screen when the App launches and the second is for the Product Index.
Download the Magento Mobile App Fireworks PNG (Hosted on Box.net)
This is only version 1 and I’ll aim to include more elements as I work on this project. Updated versions of the file will be made available as part of this blog post.
Updated: My First App Design – Great-save.com
Having created the template above it was time to get designing and the first project I’ve decided to get my teeth into is the Great Save App, an app for a goalkeeping specialist store that I am a director of here in the UK. The first designs we’re heavily influenced by the example North Face designs that Magento demoed in their recent webinar.
App Home – First concept
Product Index – First concept
Really interested to see a working store, we are implementing Magento Mobile on our site too, and are particularly interested in getting it to match our house style too. Good luck with your store.