Responsive e-commerce

Abstract: With today’s big market of smartphones and tablets, computers are no longer the only device with a web browser. As a result of this more and more web pages are designed to adjust to the size and resolution available for a specific device. When a web page adjusts like this it is called responsive web design. E-commerce via computer has been around for a while and is now used by many for their everyday shopping and it is possible to buy basically everything over internet. This Master Thesis will explore how to make e-commerce sites attractive for the users of smartphones and tablets by using responsive web design. The main focus is on the layout for smartphones. Through evaluation and mapping of existing solutions a number of prototypes have been developed. These have been carefully tested on a range of potential users. Based on the results of this test a new prototype could be developed and tested to come up with a final design proposal. Although a final prototype could be developed the conclusion is that there is no ultimate way to design a responsive e-commerce site, since a page's design and layout depends a lot on what kind of product or service being sold. What definitely can be said of an e-commerce site, used via a smatphone is that it should be easily perspicuous and don’t present too much information at once.