upto date UI, via styling

[iahmed]

To get my organization, to see the benefit, from a java api, was not a big problem.
I was able to convince, my tech organization easily to purchase the enterprise version.

I wish the default app, that came with konakart had a more uptodate UI, in terms of styling.

It still uses a lot of spacers, and the clip art icons, are not that appealing, not to mention the man on the board.

Anyhow, if in the next major release, a more up-to-date styling component

[julie]

You're absolutely right  It does need a bit of restyling to make it more visually appealing and we have this task on our road map so hopefully we'll get round to it soon. However I'd like to take this opportunity to explain why we haven't yet made this a top priority enhancement request.

For most eCommerce software solutions it's of paramount importance to have a visually appealing store-front since the store-front is an important integral part of the solution. With KonaKart often this isn't the case because many of our customers don't actually use the store-front we supply except for copying some of the code across and for learning how the APIs are used. KonaKart is architected so that all functionality is available through APIs (SOAP, RMI, POJO, JSON, JavaScript) so the eCommerce server and the store-front are very loosely coupled. The store-front uses the APIs and a cool feature is that by just changing a line in the properties file it will use any flavour of our APIs without changing a line of code. Personally I think that this is a very powerful message although it's not always easy to explain !

Being a Java solution, a significant proportion of our customers happen to be relatively large organizations with a consolidated web presence normally using a content management system. In this case they integrate KK functionality directly into the CMS system using the APIs. Other customers have built there own front ends using technologies like Wicket and JSF. If you take a look at some of our live customers http://www.konakart.com/customers you'll actually see quite a mix and even the ones that do use our JSP based store-front app, tend to revolutionize it to match their branding and so I'm sure would throw away whatever clip art we supplied even if it were tasteful !

However, your point is well taken. BTW, do you think your organization will make use of our shopping widgets http://www.facebook.com/konakart/app_190322544333196 when they become available ?

[iahmed]

Hey Julie,

Sorry for the late reply, I understand the lack of priority. 

The issue is when you are doing a POC for Konakart, versus something like hosted solutions like Magento/Shopify,

The decision makers generally, don't like something that doesn't appeal visually, it makes a big first impression.

I believe the API, is the core and is great, unfortunately, the UI is what leaves the first impression.

Also, because our project had such a tight deadline, there was no way we could update our styling to the extent I would like, since the current UI had good programming infrastructure for the basic functionality.

As far as widgets are concerned, it's not something my company would be interested in currently, as our products are not meant for a traditional (register here/pay here scenario)

We are more buy the service then we will sell you supported products for that service.