[PhilJ]

Hi Bullfrog, many thanks for that, some good points.

I'm sure each of your customers have their own reasons for using your templates. Our stores do not use animated features (slide shows, etc) because our customer base is older people and we've gotten feedback that the glitz is a turn-off.

Yes, I quite agree, slider and other eye candy will be optional.

What is most important to me is a smooth, seamless, low confusion checkout that is compatible with X-Payments. I use the Altered Cart add-on OPC package on my 4.4 stores, but could not get it to work right on my 4.5.0 store with X-Payments, so I went back to standard X-cart, which sucks. There is too much emphasis on making an account during checkout. Non-account buyers should be default, not the other way around. The 'agree with terms' checkbox is somehow invisible to some customers who complain about not being able to check out. OPC makes that an option, whereas X-Cart checkout does not. If these issues are beyond your template making, please excuse my rant.

I have been mulling over the best checkout strategy, bearing in mind that the new template needs to be mobile friendly. OPC is tricky to get right for mobiles and can be considered 'overkill' for the average punter. So I may be recommending the fastlane checkout instead (which does support xpayments as of v4.5.5). OPC is the ideal, but I'm not sure QT have got the interface as good as it should be.

This post highlights the problem... http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2013/03/14/designing-a-better-mobile-checkout-process/

The image area of product pages needs to be proportionately larger. I'm always having to edit templates to make that so. Making it into a simple setting would be a good thing.

This is done in the new template.

You seem to have avoided going to a low-contrast format style. Please do not give into the current style mania of low contrast text, box borders, etc unless you make it easy to change. My sites are for real people, older demographic, not style critics.

Again, I agree on that, I am trying to go for a middle ground on the contrast. Themes can be 'toned down' if you wish by editing the theme CSS.

Your templates have had lots of color scheme choices. Please continue that.

There will be 10 preset colour themes, with a theme and Google font previewer.

I like the cufon font setup. Please keep that.

Cufon won't be used, but Google fonts will (over 600 to choose from and hosted on the Google CDN).

I'm currently waiting for the the 4.5.5 Ability template upgrade. Will the new template be out before that? If so, and it looks good, I make jump to it if I can get another multi-site license. But I really want to start my upgrades asap. The checkout/X-Payments fiasco cost us sales last holiday season, and I want all my sites upgraded this summer.

Ability is compatible with v4.5.5 Gold now, so if you want the files just ask. The new template will be open-source, so you can use on as many stores as you want.