Thread: Better user experience

Better user experience

Very interested in Vantage theme especially for its clean code but I think you can do more for a local&regional business directory theme considering that the demand is increasing nowdays and your competitors are moving forward very fast.

Here are my ideas for better user experience point by point:
1. simpler design
2. responsive (I understand that's in progress for all your themes)
3. contact form for business owner single page
4. integration with mapsupreme plugin for homepage and custom taxonomies (maybe with the option toggle off/on)
5. geo locations (see here http://onlinedemo.sitemile.com/buzzl...tion/new-york/)
6. possibility for business owner to add free/featured events (also in progress if I remember well)
7. possibility for business owner to add free/featured classifieds (integration with classipress functions would not be so difficult)
8. custom taxonomies wise display (gridview and/or listview)
9. widgetized homepage
- main menu – ok
- main search form – ok
- geo map for all listings – toggle off/on
- widgets with featured listings / events / classifieds (gridview and/or listview)
- widgets with latest listings / events / classifieds by custom taxonomies (gridview and/or listview); maybe this plugin will help http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/...-posts-widget/
10. better way to show custom fields in create listing page

What is your opinion?

Cheers,

I'm curious to know about this too. I need a fully robust directory theme....

The Vantage theme itself was released 6 months or so ago, and yes there is certainly even more potential for enhancements to Vantage as future releases are made :)

In response to your specific points:

1. Do you mean specifically the front end design?
2. Yes, we are hoping to have all of our themes responsive by the end of the year.
3. This is something we are already looking at for a future release of the theme.
4. AppThemes doesn't officially support plugins, so integration with this specific plugin isn't necessarily on the cards at this time. This would currently require customization on your part if you were looking to have something like this on your installation of the theme.
5. I believe we are looking into multi-region options, as this is also something people would like to see in the ClassiPress theme. No specific details of when this might be just yet.
6. Yes, events functionality is planned for a future release of Vantage.
7. I'm not aware of plans to integrate our themes together in this manner. Currently, for customers who want to use multiple themes they can install separate instances of WordPress in subdirectories in order to have all of these functions on "one" site. e.g:
yourdomain.com <== Vantage installation
yourdomain.com/classifieds <== ClassiPress installation
yourdomain.com/jobs <== JobRoller installation
With user accounts linked to all installations by way of a WordPress Multiste setup.
8. 9. & 10. No specific plans at this time, however they are nice ideas and certainly the kind of feature requests we'd be happy to see in the AppThemes Ideas Exchange. This is where our community can submit and vote for theme ideas and our development team can consider them for future releases. We can't guarantee they would all be implemented, but it gives us an idea of what people want to see in our themes.

Thanks :)

Thanks for your reply.

1. Yes, the front end design, this one seems proper http://goo.gl/F0MUJ
...
4. I understand very well the ideea of marketplace and theme customization however it would be nice to have this solution implemented within the theme
...
7. For this point I wasn't very clear because I meant to say "possibility for business owner to add free/paid occasional offers" than "classifieds"
The ideea for a local business directory is:
- business owner can add a single free/paid listing per account
- business owner can add multiple free/paid events and/or offers per account
...
8. & 9. To be honest, the homepage layout of your themes is too basic and it should be more appealing, that's why I consider this should be a top priority for you
10. I mean to be able to customize with a class the input field (eg. If I insert a "price" field it should not be as long as "title" field)

Many thanks for your time !

Well, in terms of design it's not really possible to create one layout that absolutely everyone will love. Ultimately if there is something you don't like about the layout of the default theme, you always have the option to redesign it yourself as there is no encryption which would prevent you from doing so. The best method is by way of a child theme which you can either create yourself, or look for available options in the AppThemes marketplace.

This also can apply to features, not all can necessarily be implemented, or they may not all be suitable for every Vantage user - but again, if you have the means to do so, you can always modify the theme files yourself if the feature is of importance to you.