I’ve always liked design, which is pretty much a standard eBay implemention with a header. Even the header has been designed to resemble ebay shop promotion boxes with curvy corners (thanks to Sue and her code magic).
The time has come for a refresh though, and it’s down to Sue and her experiment with Frooition.
I’ve always had reservations with Frooition’s offering, along the same lines as Sue, in that anything that’s not eBay must be off-putting to buyers. That’s not proved to be the case though and with Sue reporting a 33% increase in sales I simply can’t ignore the results.
So I’ve bitten the bullet, admitted I was wrong, and am in the process of having Frootion re-design my eBay shop, and I have to say the initial design preview which the Frooition designer, Alun Widdowson, sent across yesterday is simply superb!
My shop has worked, and worked well over the years. Importantly it has been able to sell more product than I could physically pack. One of my main objectives will be to establish if a Frooition shop can deliver the same number of sales from fewer listings and save on eBay fees.
My brief to Frooition was to create a simple but professional design keeping my current colour scheme. I found it very difficult to describe what I wanted, as I was asking for less not more. I don’t want a complicated graphics heavy design, simple and to closely resemble a standard eBay shop was the main requirement.
I’m convinced that it’s not easy to design a sleek clean look, but that is what I wanted and the Frooition designers have come up trumps.
Simple, stylish but minimalist was the way I summed up the look and feel I wanted and that’s exactly what they’ve delivered.
As always I’m incredibly impressed with Frootions graphics, they’re simply superb and I love the way they’ve managed to weave my logo into them.
I’ve saved a screenshot of my old eBay shop for comparison. Now I can’t wait for my new shop design to go live!
9 Responses
Are you really sure about that sandwich picture?!
Yeah – I only get time to look at my puter when I’m eating – Isn’t everyone the same? 😛
It’s you?! Your hair’s grown :-p
I have two shops..one which frooition designed and the other just plain old ebay…. my ebay shop brings in a lot more money than the one frooition made…………… i find the template they use really restrictive… i upload hundreds of items and they have not even provided a folder to organise the items, so i just have a long list of items and its not even in alphabetical order… not really impressed for the money they charge… and there are hidden costs as there is not enough space to store pictures so you have to keep on purchasing space as you upload…
Hi Chris, I’m looking forward to seeing it live as well.
Noemi, it’s had to accurately judge the sales of two independent eBay accounts (one with Frooition and one without). The fairest test is a before and after on an established account. Frooition have a software update coming soon which addresses your comments and a lot more! The image hosting is not compulsory (you can add external URL’s) and is slightly cheaper than eBay.
I don’t like the sarnie either, and Chris shes’s not looking at the puter she’s reading the paper… which to me says “God I hate sitting on this frigging computer all day, let me skive off, read a bit of Dear Deidre and stuff my face with this overpriced tasteless calorie laden processed sandwich!
Apart from that its looking good!
Kate
I can see this sandwich is going to haunt me forever 😆
Thing is when do people browse eBay at work – when they’re skiving off work and having lunch etc…. I’m gonna let it stay 😛
Mark, re the designs, to be honest I really *wasn’t* looking for clever design, the functionality that Frooition offer was the one and only reason which convinced me to upgrade from a standard eBay template.
Quite honestly (sorry but I’ve got to say this) I detest the look of most Frooition shops, and am not too keen on the examples that you gave either. If I was looking for a website it may be a different matter, but my brief to Frooition was to trim down their design. I asked them to cut all the backgrounds and heavy graphics that most of their clients appear to like, and to make it as eBay like as possible.
(BTW, on your shops there’s -a strange page that displays whenever a category is clicked before the main shop reloads – it doesn’t show in IE, just in Firefox.)
you could try http://www.ebayshopdesign.com
they look good to me, and there prices look ok, am in the process now of discussing having my ebay shop designed by them
helen, ebayshopdesign.com if you havent noticed is a direct copy of frooition. same layout, and same layout issues, i suspect its just a copy. im sure frootion know that already.