With cell phones taking off in popularity, Zen Cart store owners need a way to make their stores accessible to customers using a cell phone or other mobile device. Today the Branning Group released a free module that gives you a simple mobile home page. From their site:

Zen Cart Mobile: This module allows you to have a mobile-friendly home page that is 100% compatible with all cell phones made since 2005. Your new mobile home page is easily modified using the Define Pages Editor and takes less than two minutes to install. Now all users accessing your web site from a mobile phone will see a mobile-compatible web page. This page is easily editable using the Define Pages editor, and may save you a customer. Most web sites are not mobile-friendly, this module redirects your visitors to a page they can easily read from a mobile device.

You could put a phone number on the mobile page to allow the visitor a quick way to get in touch with you, or a simple email form, or extend your mobile site by adding a mobile-friendly search, etc.

The point of the module is that now visitors using a cell phone (or other mobile device) will see a page customized to them and not have to suffer through trying to see your store home page on their tiny screens. PDF | Download

Please let us know if you have tried this new module, we want to hear your thoughts.

There are many free, off-the-shelf registry plug-ins for Zen Cart that require an external site to host all of your data. At the end of the day you are depending on another site to stay online (and continue offering the service for free) for as long as you’re using them. When it comes to your customers experience and the prospect of additional sales (as well as free word-of-mouth marketing) that’s a risk I don’t recommend you take.

The Branning Group has developed a gift registry (wish list) plug-in for the Zen Cart shopping system. This registry isn’t hosted off-site, all of the data and code is on your server under your control. It’s a commercial module with prices ranging from $150.00 - $400.00 depending on the featureset you require, but I think knowing that the registry data is safe and that you have complete control over your user experience is worth the few bucks. Learn more here: http://www.branninggroup.com/zen-cart-gift-registry.php

As we all play around with the new platform this section will be updated with tips and tricks to improve:

• Load time
• Search results
• User experience
• Search engine optimization
• And anything else we can do to improve the profitability, growth and reach of our online stores!

The teaser at zen-cart.com promises a new templating system for their latest release - which is great, except that a lot of  us have spent a lot of time and money perfecting our current template, so the idea that we’ll have to start over isn’t very exciting.

As templates are brought to our attention, we will feature them here. We will also highlight tips and tricks to improve the potentially painful transition process to the new templating system using your old design. Stay tuned!