Commerce needs urgent improvement

[The Old Man]

I had to spend a lot of time yesterday improving the size of product images in Commerce because they are in all honesty ridiculously tiny and fixing image alignment.

• e.g. Featured products widget = 140px
• Recent product reviews widget = 75px x 75px
• Store List View = 130px x 130px (making use of an image 2048x1461 in one case of mine) 🤯
• Store Grid View= 160px height

Why are they still limited to 160px and 130px dimensions in 2023?

Commerce should also generate some resized images for use in various places where needed instead of only displaying a 1920x1080 or larger image as a thumbnail? It doesn't seem to use Lazyload images in some places either.

It would be helpful to get action on the image sizes sooner rather than later.

Secondly, IMHO Commerce feels like it is undergoing a slow, twisting death in the winds of development hell having too many features being stripped out of it but nothing has seemingly yet been added.

Please can you consider posting a series of Blog updates about the future product. I’d like to see support for scheduled sales, BOGOFF offers etc.

Many thanks!

Edited October 26, 2023 by The Old Man
Rephrased in retrospect

[Marc Stridgen]

Thank you for your feedback on the commerce section of our product. While I understand you wish to see changes in the product, this isn't something you will see happen overnight. Change takes time, and we have said in quite a few places that the commerce product as a whole is undergoing change.

In the first instance, items are indeed deprecated that we no longer see as being part of our overall goal for the commerce area of our product. These, as I'm sure you are aware, are the support items, and physical product items. This is the first step in change to the product and is important information for us to get out to our existing customers first and foremost. (Some will of course want time to prepare for these items).

The design is something in which you have focused on quite heavily there. As you have seen from the last few blog entries, the quite as a whole is undergoing quite a redesign. This includes all areas of the suite. However, there will always be areas in which you may want to customise to suite your individual needs. This is not to say improvement can't be made, of course.

I'm sure you have seen, we have been posting may blogs of late, on upcoming changes within the product as a whole. But it's important to note that change takes time, and we are moving much much faster than most in this respect. There will be blogs about many other items to come over the coming months (there have been 5 this month already)

In terms of feature suggestions, I feel this part does need addressing here. We have many areas of feedback and suggestions, both on the community here, and much much more besides. Its important that we pull this information together and choose a general direction for our product as a whole. Therefore not all suggestions will make it to a final product, and those that do may not do so in the exact manner suggested.

 

[The Old Man]

8 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

The design is something in which you have focused on quite heavily there. As you have seen from the last few blog entries, the quiet as a whole is undergoing quite a redesign. This includes all areas of the suite. However, there will always be areas in which you may want to customise to suite your individual needs. This is not to say improvement can't be made, of course.

Quote

In terms of feature suggestions, I feel this part does need addressing here. We have many areas of feedback and suggestions, both on the community here, and much much more besides. Its important that we pull this information together and choose a general direction for our product as a whole. Therefore not all suggestions will make it to a final product, and those that do may not do so in the exact manner suggested.

Sorry my feedback seems to have caused some angst, I’m unsure why that is, yes it’s an area of frustration with the product that could be improved but it seems to match the invitation and purpose described in this feedback forum. It’s in one of a few feedback areas remaining that aren’t controlled by over moderation.

8 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

The design is something in which you have focused on quite heavily there. As you have seen from the last few blog entries, the quite as a whole is undergoing quite a redesign.

Unfortunately, I don’t see this as relevant to my main point about the size of the product images, or the argument that change takes time. Surely a few image sizes could be updated by IPS staff in a few hours, much better than I could do with simple CSS overrides, probably much quicker.

I'm not asking for overnight improvements but these image sizes have been overlooked for years and yet they have a direct business case bearing on our ability to make sales.

The other things I mentioned are more for future product improvements but reading between the lines, the Commerce images could and ideally should be improved in v4, not just hopefully as part of v5. Commerce wasn’t a cheap product to invest in!

[Marc Stridgen]

10 hours ago, The Old Man said:

Unfortunately, I don’t see this as relevant to my main point about the size of the product images, or the argument that change takes time. Surely a few image sizes could be updated by IPS staff in a few hours, much better than I could do with simple CSS overrides, probably much quicker.

I understand the thought process there, however of course we have to look at the product as a whole. There are many many things like this where people would like to see change or improvement. 1000 tiny things is unfortunately no longer a tiny thing. 

[The Old Man]

Okay, thanks.

For anyone interested or finding this in future, here's the 4 CSS rules I used to increase the size of the product images in Commerce. I didn't go as far as editing the HTML templates to add lazy loading or anything but it's a start:

/* Add to custom.css - Overide and increase size of tiny Commerce product images */

.cNexusProduct_image,
.cNexusCategory_grid .cNexusProduct_image {
  width: 100%;
  height: auto;
}

.cNexusProduct_image img,
.cNexusProduct_image .ipsNoThumb,
.cNexusCarousel.cNexusCategory_grid .cNexusProduct_image img, .cNexusCarousel.cNexusCategory_grid .cNexusProduct_image .ipsNoThumb {
  width: 100%;
  max-height: 100%;
  max-width: 100%;
}

.cNexusCategory_list .cNexusProduct_image,
.cNexusCategory_list .cNexusProduct_image img,
.cNexusCategory_list .cNexusProduct_image .ipsNoThumb {
  max-height: 100%;
  min-width: 250px;
}

/* Align product images with top of row and Product title in List mode */
ol.ipsDataList.ipsDataList_large.cNexusCategory_list li.ipsDataItem div.ipsDataItem_generic {
  vertical-align: top;
}

/* End overide */